A Different Irene Adler's Victory
by Coquillage Atlas
Summary: An AU, in which a very different Irene Adler lives with John Watson and Sherlock Holmes in 221B. Takes place two years after Sherlock's fall, told from Irene's point of view. Includes violence, danger, resurrection, cases, and remembrances, along with other recurring characters. Seventeen chapters in total.
1. Clock

**Clock**

The handcuffs around her left wrist and right ankle are wet with blood and water, blood from a previous injury and water from the drip above her makeshift bed. She cannot feel her feet inside her thin ballet flats; she cannot move her right arm without intense pain.

Her shirt has ridden up against her back and the coarse grimy blanket pricks her skin in a thousand places. She would turn over, tug her shirt down, rub her numb feet with both hands, but Moran is staring down at her through the brilliance of his penlight. Her skull feels as though it is splintering apart.

Sebastian Moran's eyes are floating black splotches in a white miasma.

She thinks she sees him blink as he moves the penlight from one eye to the other, watching her pupils flit back and forth as she tries to scan his face. She knows he is tan, tall, blue-eyed, red-haired, but there's nothing to see now but the blinding light and the circle of blackness around it.

He's hardly spoken to her, except for the initial encounter.

_"__May I sit here?"_

_"__You may." Her polite smile._

_His bland interest. "Have I met you before?"_

_Shaking her head no._

_Then the shuffle of his newspaper and suddenly the killer's blank stare in his eyes._

_"__You knew Sherlock Holmes, didn't you?" His voice a hiss._

_No smiling from her now._

The gun had pressed into her side. Irene's mind had fled far away, so far she couldn't remember what happened to people in this very situation. She should have stood up and shouted for help. The driver would have stopped the bus, the riders would have scattered in dismay, perhaps one of the larger men would have tackled Moran to the black rubber floor.

But someone would have died, and it would not have been Moran.

Now he's checking her vitals. He does it every morning and night. He wants to keep her alive. The gash in her arm was a mistake, she'd realized, after her second escape attempt had ended in blood dripping on the floor and his stricken eyes darting around the room for towels, bandages, the knife drooping from his hand.

The long cut is wrapped carefully in gauze; the cuff around her left wrist is padded with the same. Her feet are cold; this basement is filthy; the ceiling drips. Moran does not concern himself with her comfort. He simply needs to keep her alive.

He says she's the bait.

She doesn't believe him. Sherlock is dead. Soon she will be too.

The penlight flashes off, leaving her blind. She closes her eyes, listening.

Irene hears him straighten, a bone clicking in his shoulder, his clothes whispering as he moves away. The floor crunches and grinds under his boots. She would say something acrid, but her taunts faded away days ago, along with her energy.

She hasn't eaten anything substantial since Monday night. A bag of peppery crisps and an apple before Moran had gotten on the bus. She'd been heading to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare's birthplace. Originally, she'd planned to go with John and Mary, but Mary had called the night before about a family emergency, and John had said he thought he should stay with her. Irene had agreed. She'd packed her suitcase and left.

Really, though, she'd been relieved. She was still grieving, and she was afraid that if John and she had gone together, even if Mary had come along, they'd spend the whole time gazing at houses and landmarks and signs and saying to each other what Sherlock would have thought.

None of them would have been happy, and John was happier at home with Mary. She couldn't have begrudged him that, not after everything that had happened with Sherlock.

There's a click in the corner of the basement, and a tiny red light glimmers into existence. Moran passes in front of it, a black mass, and then the light pops back again.

"Smile for the camera," Moran says. His light voice curdles her stomach.

_Grunchh. Grunnnch._ Boots over dirty stone. The door shuts and he's pounding up the stairs.

A slight breeze, moist earthy air, passes over her from the closing of the door.

She looks in the direction of the video camera. She would say something to it, but she's positive it's only Mycroft sitting on the other side, his mouth turned down. And she's already told it everything she knows.

Colonel Sebastian Moran, Moriarty's sniper and second-in-command, wants Sherlock to come here, thinks he's alive, doesn't believe her about his suicide. She's in a basement. Either the pipes are leaking or it's raining heavily outside. Was upstairs once, at night: she's trapped underneath a large manor house. Judging from the décor, she's probably still in England. She's been here for six days.

Moran has promised the viewers eight. Then he'll kill her, if Sherlock doesn't show.

"It's Sunday," she tells the camera. "I'm still fine. I know you're doing everything you can." She imagines Mycroft's left eyebrow rising, his piercing eyes. "You still have time. Please be careful." Now Mycroft's face is incredulous, skeptical. But there's nothing she can do about it.

There's that stubborn catch in her throat again. She won't cry. She knows Moran watches these things; he's upstairs right now on his laptop, she's sure. She can't imagine _his_ expression. Wary, encouraged, focused? None fit his shadowy face, the eyes that gleam out at her from darkness.

Carefully, she slides two fingers into the blanket, withdraws the tiny nail. She works it into the cuff's catch, slowly enough that her hand isn't visible over the folds of the blanket, even though the basement is almost completely dark. An overturned tin can with pinpricks in two places: the video camera's light, and the grey bulb flickering over her head.

Moran likes to turn the actual lights on from time to time, so the whole room becomes a white box and destroys her vision for a good minute and a half. That was how he'd stopped her first escape attempt, but not the second.

The second time, she was creeping to the door on noiseless feet, the blanket piled up in imitation of slumber, handcuff open against the wall, links trailing down to the floor. He'd woken just then, she later decided, because when she opened the door, her right hand raising a chunk of rotten wood, his sudden knife had cut open her arm.

Then he'd hit her under the chin and the world had dropped away.

Some fighter she was.

The third time she'd made it up the stairs, her hand flat over her mouth to silence her breathing, her injured arm tucked into her side. He was standing before an open refrigerator, one hand on the door. There was a carton of milk next to his thigh.

"Go back downstairs," he said. He could have been talking to a dog.

Irene picked up a glass paperweight from a table and flung it at him, whirling in the same moment. The windows in the next room were wide and dark and barred. She ran, her shoes slipping on thick carpet. Behind her glass crackled under Moran's boots.

The hallway was so long she was afraid she was hallucinating. Her breaths were heated metal. She couldn't hear anything behind her, she couldn't find the door.

Right turn into another hallway, this one lined with little snarled rugs and dainty side tables, reaching for her as she ran. Left into a circle of mirrors. No, back up, go out, hurry. Can't hear anything but my own breathing. Sounds like the ocean pounding in my ears. Where is he, probably inches away, must know this whole house. Hurry up.

Stupid shoes, no traction on polished wood. Can't run very fast anymore. Arm is banging into my ribs. Bleeding again. Press it against the jacket; must not allow him a blood trail. He's playing with me, I know he is. No stop it, no hysteria. No. I'm going to get out of here. Find the door.

Then there was the rush of movement, too fast for her to follow. All of her planned defences fell away, useless against the impenetrable torso, slam of stone shoulders, held against the wall. Her head pinned to the cold of a mirror, frame digging into her spine. Eyes looking up into his, squirming, can't find his groin with her knee. The ugly smell of old dairy and citrus wafting into her face.

How ashamed Sherlock would be of her. All of his careful instruction gone to waste. Tears prick her eyes at the remembrance. A wail of misery in her head. _I miss you. I'm sorry. I would do something but I can't._ Moran's holding her off the floor. He rears back.

Crack of fist against chin.

An added shackle for that attempt, the careful examination of walls and floor and bedding. But he hadn't found the nail. She'd driven it up into her hair, a messy knotted braid, thick with dust and plaster shavings; worked the nail into the elastic band. Stupid of him, not checking her hair.

_Or maybe he knows; he's playing with me, toying with me. Toying: cruel soft word, reminds me of puppetry._

After he'd gone she'd managed to claw her hurt arm up behind her head and pull it out. It had taken her hours. Luckily there'd been a split seam in the blanket so she could hide it.

Now she presses it into the catch, breathing as evenly as possible, eyes on the ceiling, never her wrist. The bent end of the nail catches against the clasp, clicking loudly, and she holds her breath. She can't be certain if her perception of sounds differ from Moran's, if the video picks up every slight noise.

A minute passes, then another. She counts the seconds in her head until she reaches five minutes. There. She begins again.

Thumping on the stairs. Irene shoves the nail back into its seam with trembling fingers (_stomach scrabbling at itself, eyes burning_), watches the door. Her right arm feels bloated, swelling against the bandages like a sausage over the fire. _Please, not an infection._

Moran opens the door, closes it behind him, goes to the video camera. Irene stiffens behind him, watching his back. This is new and wrong. What is he doing? He always leaves the camera on at night; he doesn't touch it again until the morning, when he brings it upstairs. Maybe he's gotten tired of her updates, maybe he's going to give "Sherlock" more hints, maybe he's –

"I'm sorry," Moran says to the camera, and he sounds like he is. Irene blinks. "But I'm done waiting for Sherlock Holmes."

She sees the bulge in the back of his shirt just before he turns.

He goes out, one foot holding the door open, and drags a battered wooden chair inside. He pulls it in her direction. Dust sprawls into the air.

Irene watches him without moving, aware of so many things at once: the matted hair bunched and bothersome under her head, the dripping in the corner, the blinking red light of the camera. Moran's movements, slowed down because of her shock. She feels as stupid as she'd been on the bus, angry and fearful and useless.

_I'm so sorry, Sherlock_, she whispers in her head, pretending, hoping somehow something of him can hear her. _I couldn't do anything. You were right; we're stupid, I'm stupid. Mindless idiots. Our little heads filled with sawdust and clutter. You knew I'd end up this way. You just didn't know it would be so soon._

He's speaking again. "Sherlock Holmes, here and now, or she dies. Ten minutes."

Panic.

Tugging uselessly at the handcuffs. Moran's eyes flat as they look at her, the light vanishing under the door as it closes. The gun darker in his darkening hand. Never thought she would be so helpless. Hates him so much. May as well tell him how she feels before she goes.

"You think you're so competent, level-headed," she says, voice a croaking snarl, head buzzing. "But you're insane. Out of your mind. Moriarty – he had nothing on you, and I thought he was a total loon." The words are so hard to fit together. Every insult falls flat.

But he's surprised: his eyes fly wide and black under the shifting bulb-light, his body twitching as if from tiny impacts. Earlier she'd chosen her words so cautiously, afraid that somehow he would be more capable of hurting her if she'd given him her true thoughts.

She has nothing to lose anymore.

"You know he's dead," she tells him. "Sherlock. He's dead. I saw his body."

She can't believe she's saying this; she whispers apologies in her head to her ghost-Sherlock, her pitiful memory of him, washed-out and drained of colour, like an old photograph. The words should stick in her throat.

_Oh Sherlock, I can't have you dead, not you._

"Body double," Moran says, leaning down. He's got the gun pointed at her head. "Or someone switched him when you weren't looking."

"Don't be an idiot," she snaps, the word breaking as she realizes it's one of Sherlock's. She coughs, her throat suddenly full of knives. Her arm thuds against the blanket with each spasm. Ricochets of pain, like fireworks. The moisture here is rather thick. During one of her monologues to Mycroft she'd hacked for a while.

Moran sits back, expressionless, swivels to the camera. "Nine minutes."

Irene finds her breath again, swallows spit and pain. Time to try another tactic. Participate in his delusion and you might live longer. "If you shoot me, you'll have no guarantee he'll show up. He won't come if I'm dead."

"If I shoot you in the head." He moves his hand. "But in the kneecap? He'll be here."

She can't help herself, she inhales sharply, her whole attention focused on her twitching leg.

Moran moves the gun back to her head, looks to the camera. "Are you listening, Sherlock? I won't cripple her if you show in five minutes."

_Surely Mycroft would have found me by now – maybe John is coming – Lestrade – swarms of policemen, agents, soldiers, sweeping through the gardens, shrubbery, forests, over hedges, lights dancing across windows. They're opening doors, prying up floorboards, feet silent, inserting tubes, sleeping gas spreading across the whole basement, knocking Moran out and me into slumber. They're so quiet that I can't hear them yet. Won't hear them, because soon I'll be sleeping and then back home._

She rouses to find Moran pacing the basement, gun at his side, walking like a soldier, like John.

Not like Sherlock, with his manic energy, so full of life. Practically dancing. He would have solved this case by now, if she and Moran had been his case. He would have been here, his coat flaring, striding into the basement. Door banging against the wall. Hair curling over his white forehead.

_The quick flurry of fists, focus and anger and precision, gun gone, flung into the corner against the tripod. _

_Moran diving for it: Sherlock's snapped kick into his ribs, Sherlock's step on his wrist, Sherlock sweeping the gun away. John at her side, calling for keys to the cuffs, warm and worried, firm hand on her pulse. Her eyes on Sherlock. Moran on the ground. Unconscious, head fallen back._

_Sherlock's quicksilver eyes on her. Fierce intelligence. Deducing. Always right. Here. Clear as day._

"Two minutes."

Moran has moved the gun back to her head. His fingers are slick and shining. She can see every hair on his blanched knuckles, pale-red needles. A forest of red cypresses. This is his last chance for Sherlock; she can feel it in his tense body and close sweatiness and harsh breath. Madness. Sherlock's dead. She's dead. Moran will be dead if Mycroft finds him. Or before. But Moran will go to John, next. John or he? Which one dies?

She can't think.

No, Moran's grieving. This is his last chance, he's thinking. He won't last two days. She bets on suicide; everyone's doing it now, it's all the rage.

"You should find a nice tall building," she's telling him, "maybe that hospital where your boss pulled the trigger. Gun to the head in emulation, perhaps." Words dancing all over the place, her head filled with doorbells, every one ringing at the same time. _There's someone at the door, Sherlock! A case for you._

_Help me. Please help me._

"Half minute." His lips move like floppy castanets.

"Or you could just jump off, save the bullets. Less waste that way. But you might land on a car, so I'd aim for the sidewalk." Is she really saying this to him?

There's a growing tremor in her ribs: heart, maybe, malfunctioning in terror. Sherlock got his heart burned out of him – _no, stop, please no – _hers peters out like a bad clock. Tick tiiiiick tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick till it freezes.

She closes her eyes against Moran's fraying stare. Enough of this.

_John props her up against the wall, soft murmuring to console her. Then John's gone, and Sherlock's long hands take hold of her head, brush her cheekbones, cold and dry. She presses her face into his coat, finally allows herself to relax. Scarf slipping across her hair. There's a button on her lips._

_He's whispering:_

_It's alright. You're safe now. It's alright._

_His voice like old honey. Dark and warm. _

_Safety._

Outside her dream she hears a clatter, far away. Moran's speaking again. She has seconds left. She will slow them down into hours. There will be enough time. She turns her face away, to months ago, days ago, miles and choices and words ago.

_[I lied to you, when you asked me that day. You were being cruel. I wanted to hurt you. No, I didn't care for you, I said. You were just a friend. A bad friend, at that. I was proud of my quick nonchalance._

_You looked at me with those eyes._

_I said. I said. I wish I had said_

_I do care._

_But the words were so stupid. And you didn't care. I thought._

_But now._

_Yes. I care. I cared. I have cared. Will care. You are dead. I still care._

_(John always knew. Of course.)_

_I care for you, Sherlock. But the word I mean is_

_love_

_Please, don't turn me away now]_

Then the bright blinding light and she thinks: Dead. _Sherlock._

Nothingness. So afraid. Sound of an explosion–

* * *

Hands quick and lithe on her face, forehead, touching the cold shackles. Soft low breathing.

"Ah!"

He's found the nail, whoever he is. She feels him slip it into the wrist cuff, hears the tinkle of falling tumblers.

"Irene."

She can't mistake the voice. She's dead, then, but no, because her arm is throbbing. She tries to pull it closer to her side. It must be a recording, that voice. But then who is crouching over her, who is undoing the cuff around her ankle?

"Don't go," she whispers. It has to be Moran. But she can't stop the words. He's playing a trick on her. There was no countdown. He's moving her to another house.

"Don't be an idiot," the same voice says. Her words. His. She opens her eyes.

She can't see anything with clarity. The basement seems to be lit with lightning. A man-sized blur crouches at her feet, black, soft-edged and spotty. The cuff falls away from her ankle, and she drags her legs away, pulling at the crumbling wall to sit up.

The blur is slowly gathering detail. Her eyes fill. She drops her head into her hands and breathes grit. Cautiously shaking, mindful of the tremors, for her arm is a massive inflamed blister.

"You're dead." It's a whimper. She can't really speak.

Irene peels her slimy hands from her face and peers over the grey swell of her knees.

His hair is trimmed short and dirty blond.

Behind him Moran lies blue-faced, scarlet, propped against the legs of the tripod, slack arms flattened on the floor. The red light is still on.

"No," Sherlock says. His eyes find hers and she feels her whole body tremble. "I'm sorry."

Tentatively, she lifts her good hand, reaching.

His fingers link around hers. Sweating fingers, bonier than she remembers, his grey-blue-green eyes almost hollowed out, lips dry and cracking at the corners. She'd forgotten those eyes, the way they changed in the light, the dark. No coat, only a thin black T-shirt and wrinkled jeans. Blood crawls in little drying patches up the inside of his paper-pale neck.

She drops her forehead into the crook of his shoulder, feels his muscles bunch and smooth, his hand travel across her back. No words left.

He's alive.

"I'm sorry," he says again. His voice, breaking, runs through her like a current.

Irene lets her tears leak into his shirt, doesn't move. She is falling asleep to the sound of his breathing, to his nearness, warmth. Her fingers curl into his shirt.

_I love you._

She won't say it.

They have time.


	2. Hands

**Hands**

She wakes in the car once, woozy and nauseous, her face towards the window. They're traveling past dark hills, somewhere in the countryside. The moon gleams foggily in the corner of her window and her eyes fix on it in confusion.

Someone's sitting in the driver's seat. She doesn't turn to look. Her fingers slip down her thigh and grasp the door handle, begin to pull.

"You really shouldn't do that while I'm driving."

She's not with Moran.

Slowly, she turns her head, at once aware of the pain jangling in the back of her skull. She lets go of the door handle.

Sherlock looks back at her, his eyes almost impersonal, his hair – _Your poor hair, Sherlock, it's all gone, ruined – _more than jarring, almost bizarre. And yet she can see how it ties into his persona: sloppy black sweatshirt, ratty jeans, old trainers. He could be a poor college kid or a lost tourist.

"Where are we?" she murmurs. Winces. Her throat is very dry.

Sherlock turns his eyes back to the road, but his white hand reaches out and lifts a water bottle from the cup holder. He hasn't gotten any tanner, and she wonders if his colouring interferes with disguises. She takes the water and tries to undo the cap.

"Heading towards Aix-en-Provence," he says.

She frowns. _France. I was wrong about the furniture._

Her muscles have atrophied from her time with Moran, and the fingers that falter on the serrated plastic are not the same ones she had a week ago. She can't get it open. For a long second a trembling sensation gathers in the back of her throat. No crying. Focus. The plastic burns in the crook of her left hand as she works at the bottle.

"Would you like a hand?" He's offering her an open palm, one with a thin white scar she's never seen.

Irene looks at it, then hands the water bottle over. She leans back in the seat. Her head falls against ripped beige leather. This must be a rental car. It smells of lemon cleaner, and everything inside is old.

Shadow trees glide past her window, holding out insubstantial arms.


	3. Fog

**Fog**

The bathroom is filled with steam, a dim place of pale gold mirrors and tiny misted windows. She wonders vaguely how much Sherlock paid for the hotel room; she hadn't been very aware during that part of their arrival.

Water climbs over her knees: she sinks into the warm embrace and lets it wrap, thick with frothy bubbles, around her shoulders. Her right arm, the injured one, rests on the side of the bathtub.

Sherlock had cleaned it, sewed the cut with white embroidery thread, wrapped it up again with fresh gauze and antibiotic cream (squeezed from a heavily used tube). He'd said it wasn't infected.

She had watched his strong hands move over her arm, looking for that thin scar on his palm, hoping she'd imagined it. But it was there, and so was another scar, hardly visible, under his jaw. A crooked line a half inch wide. Newer, pink.

Folds of the white shower curtain move gently between her and the rest of the bathroom. Sherlock is standing somewhere in the far corner, facing away from her, one finger tapping the counter. _Tip top tip._ She's afraid that if he stops his drumming she'll fall asleep in the bathwater and wake in Moran's basement, cold and stinking, her hair a knot.

She's afraid she's dreaming. He can't be here. She eases back the filmy curtain just a notch and peers out.

He's still there. He's much thinner; from this angle his cheekbone is a white knife blade. The colour of his hair is more yellow than she'd thought in the basement, brighter. It's cut so that it sweeps over his ear and above his neck in a rectangular fashion. She wonders how long it took him to fix it that way.

_He's standing before the bathroom counter, his irregular face pulled tight in concentration, one hand tracing the air around his head. He'll cut it shorter here, above the ears and neck, but leave more over the forehead. _

_The scissors flash in his hands as he cuts away black curls. They fall around his feet, the tiled counter, the basin – no, he would be leaning over the basin. Black ringlets littering the inside of the sink. Less to clean up, that way._

"Are you alright?"

She snaps awake, shaking for no reason, finds herself in the bathtub, water splashing over the side onto the floor. Sherlock is standing closer, judging from the shadow on the curtain. Has she drifted off? How long had it been?

"Might – I might have fallen asleep," she says in a mumble. She runs her fingers through her hair: already rinsed out; swipes at her knees and feet. Clean. The faucet makes a good lever, and then she's got the towel from the curtain rod and swung it around herself. Her hands fumble with the drain.

It lifts, sucking water and her footing away, but she hangs onto the soap dish. Water drips everywhere, splashing up and down and into itself. Ringing droplets of silver.

_I really need to get some sleep._

"I found you some clothes."

She knows; he told her before he drew the bath for her, before he turned away to give her privacy, before she got in. Perhaps he realizes how much she needs to hear his voice. Otherwise she doesn't have any proof. She can't fabricate that voice, the lion's purr and roar in one molten phrase.

Images are easier to falsify.

"Okay." At least this word is understandable.

"There's dinner in the other room," he says.

Irene's almost finished drying off. She listens, but there's no footsteps, no creaking of hinges. "I need to get dressed." The clothing he's bought for her is by the bathroom sink.

"Oh. Right. Okay." He goes out, the door clicking behind him.

She stands in the bathtub, those flustered syllables replaying in her head. Her hair drips down her back, cold against her skin, ticklish. Her hands clutch the lavender towel, wrinkles splaying out over the thin material.

He can't be alive.

_Be real, Sherlock; be there when I go out,_ she pleads, _be real. For me. Don't be dead._

* * *

Dinner is onion soup and an old baguette. The soup has chunks of strange meat that Sherlock suggests she shouldn't eat. She sits at a tiny round table before their two small beds and tries to do as he says, her bent spoon clinking quickly around the curve of her bowl. Even the greyish meat looks appetizing.

Sherlock waits against the wall, his ankles crossed over each other, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He's still in character even now. Irene glances at him every few seconds, simultaneously outraged and relieved and bewildered every time her eyes slip over his cropped hair, his unnatural stance. He doesn't look away from her. Perhaps he is reassuring himself too.

At last she can't eat anymore, and she puts down her spoon on a greasy napkin.

"I don't understand."

His eyes dart to hers. "What?"

Irene finds the same damn water in her eyes. She reaches for her cup and drinks. She puts it back down. Her teeth are chattering.

"You're not supposed–" _Oh, I can't do this._ "Why – why did you–"

_You left us. You died and left us. We saw them bury you, in the ground, in the stone-grey cemetery. You were in a coffin. In the ground._

She's not looking at him. The napkin under her spoon is rimmed in little parallel lines, a quaint design. Ugly. She glances across the table, then to the beige wall, to Sherlock's battered canvas shoes. Light green, almost mint-coloured. He's quite still.

After a moment she realizes he may not be capable of speaking. She looks at his face.

Not tears. Disorientation. Perhaps rage, in the set of his jaw. She doesn't understand.

"Sherlock?"

Irene grasps the table to stand, and finds her vision wobbly and teetering all around the hotel room, past the awful landscape painting, past the sunrise in the windows, past two long arms reaching for her and a wan white face, his eyes glistening.


	4. Sleep

**Sleep**

In the middle of the afternoon Sherlock has a terrible dream and Irene falls out of her bed and stumbles over to his. His back arches and his face twists, his arms akimbo, his hands clenched on the pillow as if he wants to strangle it. Irene can't decide whether to touch his shoulder or whisper his name; she steps forward and back on cold feet, arms wrapped around herself.

Finally she musters up enough courage (_how long are you going to stand there_) and sits down on the edge of the bed. It shakes with his spastic movement. There's beads of moisture under his eyes, caught in bluish hollows.

He's groaning. Foreign words, her name, John's. Hers again. Moran's.

"Sherlock, wake up," she whispers. She grasps his shoulder: all bone and skin: he rouses immediately. No sudden movements, just his eyes opening. He lets go of the pillow.

"Bad dream," he says to the ceiling, his tone officious, as if she didn't know. As if he doesn't know her.

Irene lets go of him.

He twists to face her, his eyes (_beautiful even now, how did I forget how beautiful they were – are_) widening, as if he knows what she's thinking. But of course he does; he always does. Did.

"I didn't want to go," he tells her. He is very close. "To leave you and John. I had to."

"No," she says. What is he talking about? "You didn't."

You didn't have to die? Her heart speeds into overdrive. You faked your death. You _faked_ your _death_. I can't believe this.

"There were snipers on you and John and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. Moriarty's empire was still functioning. You would have died." He babbles this out, staring at her, his stare piercing. She can see the fear in his eyes, the terrified child's question: what if she turns on him?

Doesn't she believe him?

But she can't take it in; she closes her eyes, brings her fists up to her forehead. What snipers? Moriarty is dead. They found him on the roof with the back of his head blown out.

She slides off the bed and sits on the rumpled carpet, her back pressed against the iron bedstead. It is very cold in here; she should find a bathrobe. Sherlock has one in his suitcase, she saw it, folded maroon softness, when he was finding a shirt for her to sleep in. Her jacket isn't –

A muffled sound, like a cough but softer. Is he crying?

"I don't –" she tries. "I – you're _alive_." She sits there. There's a roaring in her ears. The ocean again.

The sky has opened its mouth and is pouring sunbeams through the hotel roof. She turns brokenly, her hands dragging on the carpet, and looks at Sherlock, all of him, lanky limbs and pale green irises and anguish in his face, chopped-off hair, so thin his collarbones almost strain through his translucent skin. Tears sliding in his eyes, about to drip on the yellow blanket.

"Snipers?"

He swipes the tears away with the back of his shaking hand. "I jumped to protect you and John. I took precautions to make sure I wouldn't actually die. Molly helped." He swallows, and his throat ripples painfully, the scar along his jaw dancing. _How many others does he have?_ "Moran's dead, Irene. He was the last one I had to – find. The last of Moriarty's people."

Understanding: if Moran's dead, they're safe.

But then –

"Why are we here?" Her fingers creep up the blanket until they latch around his cold wrist. She feels his blood surging under her fingertips, panic in blue and purple motion.

He's still shaking. "I don't think I can do it," he whispers, every word like sandpaper. "I can't go home. John. He'll hate me."

Irene can't bear the look in his eyes. She lowers her gaze. Presses her face against his hand on the blankets, her cheek against roughened knuckles.

With a sigh, Sherlock drops his head on her shoulder. His other hand latches around the back of her neck, his fingers cold and moist on her skin. Irene's hair falls around him like a veil. She can feel his quiet shuddering breaths.

She musters words, pushes them out past cold lips. Careful to keep the tears from her voice. "I don't hate you. So John won't, I promise he won't, Sherlock. No one should hate you."

Sherlock murmurs her name, and something she doesn't quite hear. It sounds almost like a kiss, and she pats his shorn hair until he's quiet and they're both asleep again, collapsed over the side of the bed, their shoulders and ribs tucked around iron springs and sharp elbows, their faces pillowed on each other. Both of them are so tired.


	5. Phone

**Phone**

"He was never supposed to be able to take you. Mycroft had people following you."

They're in the car again, heading to the airport. Irene sits with one leg tucked under her, her arm on the windowsill, drying hair loose around her shoulders. Sherlock sips now and then from a blue cardboard coffee cup; Irene notices that he winces every time at the taste. She'd had water during breakfast, knowing that coffee would only upset her stomach.

Sherlock twists the wheel and they sail across an intersection into another tight street. It rises on either side with tall white apartments, cutting the sky into a blue river.

"And John too?"

"Everyone," Sherlock said. "You were all supposed to be safe. Mycroft promised me."

Irene can't imagine the importance of this promise: that Sherlock had to ask Mycroft for something, or what Sherlock may have promised in return. She won't dwell on it. There's strain in his voice at the mention.

"So he had agents following us," she says, and tries to think of who had been trailing her. She can't remember any faces that popped up too often, any people who seemed suspicious. Just a blur of people in coats and jeans, young and old and forgotten after a glance. "They were good."

"They had to be good. For John," Sherlock agrees. "Mycroft took his military training into account. You had two tails, as did the rest of my – as did everyone else."

Pigeons scatter before the car, rising like paper airplanes on stiffened wings.

_They go up, not down._

_I thought you'd fly when you jumped. Your coat spread out behind you like black wings. _

_No. Stop it. Pull yourself together. Look at him. He's __**here.**_

"So what happened?" she asks. "They weren't on the bus."

"Bus?"

Irene glances at him, away. "When Moran took me. He got on my bus–"

"I remember," Sherlock interrupts, but whether it is to save her from the recollection or simply because he _has_ remembered, she doesn't know. "Yes. He intercepted them earlier. One on the subway, the other in a night club. If you had been traveling with John, it's likely he wouldn't have abducted you."

Irene is struck by an instant wave of defensiveness. "I couldn't have known that. And John was with Mary – _oh,_ I have to call him, Sherlock, why didn't I think of it earlier? Where's my phone? He must be worried sick."

She's reaching for her non-existent purse, checking her pockets for her phone, before she remembers that everything is gone, that Moran had taken her suitcase and purse from her.

She can see John sitting in the empty flat, silent phone beside him, old worries written around his mouth.

Sherlock's tone is blunt. "You can call him on mine."

He draws his from his pocket, a black flip-phone she's never seen him use, hands it to her. "Moran tossed your phone after he grabbed you, on his way to Heathrow Airport. There was no way to trace you after that."

"Where were you during all of this?"

She doesn't mean the question to be accusing, but he flinches anyways. "On my way to Mycroft. Moran had already put the third video up before Mycroft called me. I was later… than I would have wanted."

Irene finds herself rubbing her thumb on the phone's smooth screen, her breath uneven. "You watched the videos."

"Every one."

"What did he say to My– to you, when he didn't have the camera in the basement?"

"Nothing. It was never on unless it was with you."

Irene sits up, putting both feet flat on the floor of the car, the phone and John forgotten. "He didn't tell you anything? You had to figure out where I was just from the grainy picture of a dark basement?"

"You gave us information," Sherlock says, his eyes flitting quickly from the road to her. "You told us about the furniture, the leaking pipes. The bars on the windows. I had something to go on, from what you said." His hands tighten on the wheel. "But it took me a long time to realize where you were."

"What gave it away?" She's scrounging her brain, trying to figure out what hidden clues Sherlock had seen, what wall panelling, fragments of wood, quality of dust that had given him the key.

"There were two small mushrooms, almost invisible, growing in the corner of the basement opposite to you. _Sanguins._ They're native to France. Of course, they're very common in the French countryside, but they primarily grow by Provence."

He pauses. "The leaking pipes indicated it was an older house, ignored or unused by the owners, currently unoccupied: a summer house, then. Again, Provence, because it's a common vacation spot in France. The owners kept the house furnished, so they expected to come back at least twice a year: Provence again, because of its consistently warm weather. The bars on the windows indicated that it was close to a city; they wanted to keep out burglars. Provence."

Sherlock draws a deep breath and stops, staring out the windshield. Irene looks down at her clasped hands, her nails biting into her legs. She hadn't thought she'd ever hear one of Sherlock's deductions ever again.

He goes on, more quietly. "We didn't see the mushrooms for four days. Moran either knew they were there and purposely set the camera facing away, or he hadn't noticed them at all. Without them, we would still be searching in the British countryside."

Irene shakes her head. The idea that Sherlock – _Sherlock _– had been watching these videos, listening to her hoarsened voice night after night, as she tried to relay pertinent information, tried to keep her mind working. As she _grieved_ for him. Dear God, had she said anything about him? She can't remember. If she'd talked in her sleep –

A flush is working up her neck. She straightens her back and looks out the window, gripping the mobile phone in both hot hands.

"I didn't intend –" he breaks off in exasperation, clicking his teeth together. "I should have gotten there sooner. I'm sorry I took so long. To find you." He thinks she's angry with him.

_Don't be an idiot._

Three apologies in two days. It would be a miracle, except that he's alive and that's one miracle enough for her. Irene nods, swallowing away the swelling in her throat. Her eyes prickle with moisture.

"I knew someone would come," she says. They're stopped at a light. She turns in her seat and looks at his fixed profile. "I'm happy it was you."

He doesn't seem to register this; there's a muscle twinging in his jaw. "Irene… Moran – did he –"

Horror rises so quickly in her throat that she can't draw breath to tell him no. She shakes her head like a puppet, back and forth and back, sweating at the idea. Sherlock's eyes lock on hers and the light turns green and no one moves. There's a spasm of honking behind them.

"Later," she manages to force out. _I may vomit on you, dear. Please look away. I promise, it wasn't as bad as you think. (Was it?)_

He puts his foot on the gas and goes. His shoulders twitch with muscle. She thinks he would have killed Moran all over again if he could, right then, there, in the car. Blood on the windows, nails scrabbling for purchase on the seats. Boots flailing. Knife in the gut. No need for guns this time.

_Don't be an idiot._

Irene curls into her ripped seat. The memories intruding like a third eye opening in her forehead, her personal Cyclops awoken.

_Dripping in the corner. Fourth day and you think you might be dead already. What's the point of living if your life consists of a dark wet box and the sullen eye of a single camera? I could provoke him into killing me. Sneak out one too many times, get him to cut me with that knife again._

_(But think of John. Mrs Hudson. Lestrade. Who will lend them books and tell them stories? Who will help Mrs Hudson clean and bake and find her men to date? Who will listen to John's war stories, wake him up from nightmares, go with him to terrible musicals? Who will encourage Lestrade to woo Molly, who will dog-sit for him when he's busy with a case?)_

_Toast and fruit for breakfast and a bagel for dinner; my, your jailer's sweet to you. Did you see his hands? Flat and big as platters. Mouth like a hungry shark. You're the minnow, tiny silver bloody fish dangling from a hook. What do you think he's going to do with you?_

_(Focus on survival, idiot._

_You're not allowed to panic. Tell me, what else did you see upstairs? Inform Mycroft about the gilded mirrors.) There was a paperweight with a butterfly inside. You broke that. Wonder what it looks like shattered on the kitchen floor. Did the butterfly fall out whole, still glued to its round paper, or crash into a hundred brilliant orange pieces?_

_(Focus. You're supposed to stay alive.)_

_But for what?_

_(Sherlock would have wanted you to stay alive.)_

_He didn't stay alive for me._

* * *

They stop for petrol; Irene totters to the toilet and back while Sherlock fills the tank. She leans against the side of the car, hot metal burning through her shirt, while he glares at the rising gauge. The mobile phone sits in her pocket like a grenade. She has to call John.

"What do I say to him?"

It's a definite sign of her worry, that she's asking Sherlock, the man who lacks every social grace.

"What am I supposed to tell him? Hi, John, so sorry I took so long to get back to you, but I got kidnapped by one of Moriarty's old buddies, and then Sherlock – who's alive, by the way – showed up and now we're coming home?"

Her voice winds higher and higher until she breaks off in consternation. Sherlock is rigid beside her.

He stares at the fuel pump.

Irene jams the phone into her pocket, blinking hard at nothing. "I can't just – I don't know what to tell him."

The pump beeps. Sherlock takes the nozzle from the car, jams it back into its slot, snaps the fuel cap shut. Then he stares past the pump, past the petrol station, his gaze delving so far away Irene thinks he could be watching birds dart over invisible buildings, people working in offices.

"You told me he wouldn't hate me," he says at last. He runs a hand through his hair and Irene's lungs collapse: the gesture is so _Sherlock, _no matter that his curls are gone, no matter that they are in the middle of France, two years after his faked suicide.

"You told me _you_ didn't hate me," he says. "So don't call him. We'll meet him at Mycroft's house; my brother can tell him he has information about your disappearance. He'll be there."

"Why Mycroft's?" Irene says, amazed at the beginnings of a smile on Sherlock's lips. She steps closer, suddenly wanting to take his hand, touch him on the shoulder. _Watch yourself. You're too close. He doesn't know how you feel._

Sherlock drops his hand from his head, turns back to the car. There's an elusive note in his voice, something almost hopeful. Brighter. "It's closer to the airport."

"Okay," she says, cheered. "Okay. We can do that."

They get back into the car and Irene settles into her seat, suddenly aware that she's worn out. Like a battered handkerchief. A flattened scrap of an old T-shirt. Stretched too thin.

The sunlight drops in and out as they drive through the station, and for a moment Moran's face is superimposed over the pumps outside the window, his shadowy features staring at her. She blinks and the image is gone. They're on the streets again, speeding away from Aix-en-Provence, heading towards London.

Irene sees dust rise from the sidewalk, borne over the heads of passer-by in a whirl of gold speckles, and she's asleep before it settles at their feet.


	6. Coat

**Coat**

Lamplight casts a pool of muted gold around her feet, rising up her legs, touching the brim of her face. She wants to sink into it, this caressing weightless water. So warm on her pallid skin.

Irene sits in a beautifully upholstered armchair, thick dark leather embedded with fat studs. Her grimy clothing is spinning into cleanliness in the downstairs laundry room; she wears a long silk dressing gown over a pair of Sherlock's old grey sweatpants and one of his T-shirts. Her injured arm is swathed in yet another layer of bandages. Stiches examined, pronounced passable, tucked away by gloved medical hands.

Mycroft sits at a shining table, turned away, facing a long bank of black windows. His umbrella leans against a pristine green couch.

This house is so similar to the one she'd been locked underneath. She traces a finger along the binding of the book on her armrest. _The Tempest. _Her least favourite Shakespeare play, and yet the only book in this room that she's chosen from the massive bookshelves against the wall.

Probably because she knows she won't read it.

"Dr Watson will be here tomorrow," Mycroft says, gravelly-voiced, speaking for the first time in thirty minutes.

They are waiting for Sherlock to return from the makeshift hospital on the other side of the house. _Manor._

Irene turns the book upside down, looks at the worn pages. _Well-read. By whom?_ "Okay."

He swivels to look at her directly. Hawk-faced, looking down his nose. The skin around his eyes is tired, almost veiny. "You must have questions for me."

She sets the book on the side table, next to a glass ashtray. _How to phrase this._

"I presume," she says, ignoring the waver in the second word, "you found out about Sherlock's – death – after he... jumped. He wouldn't have told you beforehand, or you would have stopped him from doing something so foolhardy. He must have told you immediately afterward, or you would have tried to examine the… body."

"That is correct," Mycroft says. He looks more carefully at her. Surprised.

For a scant moment she hates him for his condescension, but then the hot angry feeling drops away. There's such weariness in his posture.

"Did he tell you any of this?"

Irene shakes her head.

"Anything else, then? Other questions?"

"No," she says. Swallows. _Bus scared gun man redhair gun. Trapped._ "I'm sorry about your agents."

Pain in those unemotional grey eyes, the barest wince around his lips. He nods stiffly. Unwilling to show her what he feels.

Behind him the oaken door swings open, silent.

Mycroft turns at the sound of clipped footsteps, and Sherlock comes into the study. He's wearing his coat.

_The _coat. Black sleeves falling past the front of his hands, tall collar turned up, red buttonholes. He fills it up, corporeal body inside a shell of the past.

_Ghost. _

_I packed that up. I put it away under your bed. The sheets were stripped. I did it._

_You were gone._

Irene fumbles to her feet, out of her chair, hands shaking. Leather slipping against her back as she seesaws, teetering, unable to stand still, to go to him. To go out. _God, it's him. It's really him. I can't do this. I can't._

"Ms Adler," Mycroft is saying, rising to his own feet.

"Irene," Sherlock says. Hands lacing themselves together before him.

"Give me a minute," she begs him. She forces tears back into her eyes. Down her throat. "I – I can't… What are you going to tell John? How is he going to handle this? We thought –– you were dead, Sherlock."

"There was _no_ _other_ _way_," he says.

The last three words: a mantra, barely audible. He's been telling himself this for days, weeks, months, years; she can hear it in the hushed phrase. _Two years._

Three hundred and sixty-five days, twice over, a few more tagged onto the end. The enormity of such a number.

She sits down on the arm of the chair, suddenly weak. Sherlock passes Mycroft, comes to stand before her. Like a knight asking for pardon.

"Irene," he says. Her name: a question. "I don't know how to do this. Any of this. And we need to prepare for John before tomorrow. I know you're tired. But anything you can think of to – to –"

He raises his eyes, drops them again to hers. "To soften my return. Anything at all."

_What. What can we do. His hair, yes. It can't stay like this. Dye. Never mind the length; it'll grow._

_That scar under his chin? The one riveted into the palm of his left hand? The ones I can't see, the ones John will want to examine? No. They can't be helped._

"We can die your hair," she says, her voice quiet. "And maybe you shouldn't wear the coat. Not yet. If I – if I couldn't handle it, and I've known you've been alive for two days… Not your coat. Please."

He's already slipping out of it, draping its heavy length across the back of her chair. Rolling up his white sleeves, touching the back of his hair with two fingers. Gingerly. As if remembering an old head wound – _oh. _Oh_. _

_Blood striped across a pale unseeing face. Limp body on the pavement._

"Will this do?"

The question propels her back into the study, back into a stylish lamp-lit room. Sherlock's talking about his clothes, picking at the line of his trousers.

Long-sleeved shirt, dark trousers. Tennis shoes.

Irene nods, rubs the back of her neck.

"We need hair dye," she says to Mycroft. "Black."


	7. Home

**Home**

She sags against John Watson's shoulder, her head pressed into the black leather of his sweet-smelling jacket: smoke, antiseptic, cold fresh air. He murmurs into her damp hair, both arms clamped around her, strong arms.

"I'm alright," she manages, finally detaching herself, and he stands back. He's got one hand still on her shoulder; he's peering into her eyes. She finds her lips twitching into a fractured smile. "Don't worry, John. Mycroft's doctor already checked me over. There was nothing too bad."

John smiles shakily, pats her shoulder, still trying to find wounds, abrasions, head trauma. He looks exhausted. Darkened hollows under his eyes, his washed-out blue eyes. "Don't you ever do that to me again."

She promises him she won't, fighting the tightness in her throat. So aware that Sherlock's waiting in the room behind them.

He was pacing half an hour ago, his sleeves pushed up. Mute disarray. Black hair standing up in some places. Forehead a mask of tightness. Lips drawn.

John's asking her and Mycroft something. "Who was it? Who – took you?"

Controlled fury in his stance. Feet firm on the polished tiles. Hands loose at his sides. _He wants to find him, to hurt him. Moran._

_Red hair shining in bright fluorescent lights._

"You never told me." He's looking at Mycroft. Dangerous look. "You said you had some information on Irene's kidnapping; you didn't say she'd be here. What's going on?"

She can see he wants to be rude, to exclaim, to shout. But he's being polite. For her.

Mycroft shakes his head. No attempt to smile; he doesn't know what to do here. _How do you introduce someone to a dead man? Introduce a man to his dead best friend? _"Dr Watson, I had my reasons –"

That is not going to work. John tenses infinitesimally.

"John," Irene says, and her voice is changed enough, charged enough, that he snaps his head around. "You're not just here to take me home."

He looks at her, greying eyebrows quizzical.

"One of Moriarty's men kidnapped me. His name was Sebastian Moran… his right-hand man. The sniper at the pool." She swallows, tries to say something about the French manor, the long wait, the almost bullet-in-the-head. Sherlock.

Nothing comes out.

"But – what? I thought… Moriarty's dead." He can't bring himself to say the other name; she watches his face contract, then relax. "The whole business with him is over."

"No," she whispers. She can hear measured footsteps coming closer and closer to their door. Down the hallway. Almost here. "No, John, it wasn't."

There's something dawning in his eyes. He turns slightly, and the heavy door opens.

Sherlock is standing there, poised between the mirror-filled hallway and the drawing room. His dark hair still disorderly, his eyes abnormally bright, his hands twitching at his sides. Pain in the line of his neck, his shoulders. Scar glimmering under his jaw.

"Oh my god," John says. A breath of a phrase. "Oh my god. My god. Sherlock."

He takes a step. Then he's moving so quickly she and Mycroft can't do anything to stop him; he's in front of Sherlock. He could punch him or hug him; he could do both.

Sherlock looks down at him, so much taller. His pale lips move. He's speaking so softly neither she nor Mycroft can hear, and now she realizes that Mycroft has slipped out.

John is trembling, his shoulders loosening, tightening. _Don't hit him. Please, John. He's already broken._

She can't quite look, but then –

John opens his arms.

Sherlock seems to crumple into him, his long form bending around John's, his face falling into his best friend's shoulder. His eyes close. He is shaking.

Silently, Irene threads her way between a pair of armchairs and passes through the opposite door. She closes it gently behind her. A pain thrumming in her throat, but it is relief.

_He's home._

_We're home._


	8. Tea

**Tea**

Irene is standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, staring at the inside of a near-empty fridge, holding open the door with one hand. Cold air billows through her pyjamas. She isn't there for a late night snack. She's trying to shake off an image, a voice. Sound and colour magnified, reverberating around her in potent waves of memory.

_He stands before an open refrigerator, one hand on the door. Red hair backlit so the tips are singed orange. A milk carton sits by his thigh._

_"__Go back downstairs."_

She snaps herself out of it, shivering and sweating all at once. Breathe. Breathe. Just stand here, and look at the foil-wrapped casserole, at the plate of neatly stacked scones. Mrs Hudson must have baked yesterday. How nice of her. Close the fridge.

Irene turns around, and slides down the cool metal to sit on the tile floor, running an absentminded hand down the bandages on her arm. She feels trapped in here, trapped in the sitting room, trapped in her own bedroom.

It's been two days since she and Sherlock came home, two days of heightened emotion, people bustling in and out of the flat, everyone wired. Lestrade overjoyed; John still furious and thankful and teary; Mrs Hudson weepy, hugging her and Sherlock every ten minutes; Molly glowing and relieved, her secret finally out.

Irene attempting to blend into the background. Sherlock trying so hard to make everyone happy, to keep up appearances.

But she's seen the cracks. He's not doing nearly as well as everyone believes.

Soft footsteps on the stairs. Someone's awake and coming down to the sitting room. Irene springs to her feet, unsure if it's John or Sherlock, what to do. She feels like a fool, standing in the kitchen in the dark, her back against the fridge.

_You're not trapped. Walk forward. You know these men. If it's John you can tell him you were going to boil some water for tea –_

Sherlock comes around the corner, sees her, and stops.

They stare at each other. His hair is mussed into quills; his jaw is rough with stubble. He's empty-eyed. Irene can only imagine she looks the same.

_Do you think I'm pretty, Sherlock? I know how you look: but there are no words for your alabaster shine. _

_(Oh, don't even start that. Not now.) _

_Are you sleeping at all?_

_(Say something.)_

"I couldn't sleep." She pushes strands of hair out of her face. The stupid flush is creeping up her neck again; she clenches her other hand behind her back. "But I'm feeling better now." Why is she telling him this?

"Well, goodnight."

Sherlock holds up one long hand to stop her. The scar on his palm flashes. "Tea might help."

"What?" She's watching that unfamiliar scar.

Sherlock sees it: he lets his hand fall.

Then he seems to corral himself. "Decaffeinated, of course."

The phrase seems like a _non sequitur_ until she remembers they're talking about tea.

He's slipping past her to the kettle. Sherlock looks down at it, brushing his fingertips along the clear sides. He tilts his head back to examine the open cabinets, selects two cups.

His voice is quiet. "I – am finding it difficult to sleep, as well."

_You've changed. _

He never would have said that to her, before. But perhaps he trusts her more now, perhaps he thinks of her as a good friend, maybe even on par with John. Or, _maybe_ – but no. She sits down at the table and watches him pour water into the kettle, press down the tab to boil the water. It lights up in a blue shimmer.

Sherlock leans back against the counter, his hands in the loose pockets of his dressing gown. He turns his head, finds her looking at him. Some sort of quick flashing emotion crosses his angular face. Irene realizes she should look away, give him privacy, but she can't.

It's just – he's _here_. He's still here. Not dead. He never was.

"I'm not going to vanish, Irene. You don't have to pin me to the wall with your eyes."

He's stolen the words from her head; she tightens her lips and looks away. But had his tone been gentle, softer than usual? More like teasing, not malicious. There's no way to be sure.

"Of course not," she offers, after a moment. _I have no intention of letting you vanish again._

The kettle begins to whistle, and Sherlock switches it off. The clink of cups, spoons, splashing of tea against porcelain. Tapping as he sets the cups on a tray. Irene leans her head against her hand.

He brings the tray over, places it in the centre of the table, and to her surprise, pulls out a chair and sits opposite her. Irene glances up, about to reach for her cup, and sees his fingers fold together before his mouth. It's his thinking pose.

Scalding tears fill her eyes and spill over before she can look away. One spatters on the table, glossing the wood in water. The rest catch under her chin. Irene snatches up a napkin from the tray and dabs hurriedly at her eyes, trying to swallow the hot lump in her throat.

_Don't be an idiot. Stop crying. He's just sitting there, being Sherlock; you're freaking him out. Come on. Act sensibly. Pull yourself together._

"Sorry," she says, trying to control her voice, "I'm just having a moment. I'm fine." She swipes the napkin under her chin, crumples it in her hands. The tea cups shimmer on the white tray.

"No, it's fine."

"I just –" she tries.

"You can't –"

"What?"

Both of them have spoken the question at the same time, and Irene looks up.

Sherlock is looking steadily back at her, his greyish eyes piercing. He nods at the cup of tea closest to her. She reaches out and takes it, her fingers slick on the heated ceramic.

"You first," she says. She puts her lips to the brim. The tea is strong and sweet, just the way she likes it.

"You can't expect to have everything back to normal in just a few days," he says.

Irene knows he's not just talking about his return, but also about Moran. She stares into the milky-brown tea, then puts it down.

"I know."

They look at each other. His eyes flicker back and forth, between her and the window, her and the wall; one of his bare feet is bouncing, _tum tum pop_ on the wooden floor. She realizes that Sherlock wants to suggest a course of action to correct their current stagnation, but he's afraid that if he does so, he'll have to follow it as well.

"Sherlock," she says, steeling herself, "we need to do something." She doesn't need to clarify. He knows what she means.

Sherlock curves his lips into a sardonic pixie smile. "You think we should have some sort of sharing time, where we talk about our feelings and past actions, and how nothing that happened to us was our fault."

The words are flippant, but his tone is not. It wavers somewhere between petulance and agreement.

Irene fidgets with her cup. "Something like that. Maybe. Or we could just – sit here, and drink tea. Like you said, we shouldn't expect normality immediately."

Sherlock relaxes, his shoulders falling, and his gaze returns to her.

She props her chin up with both hands. Her eyelids dropping to the condensation on her teacup. Shimmery glaze over the porcelain.

"Go to bed," Sherlock says. "You're not even drinking your tea."

Irene sits up. "Neither are you." She looks him square in the face. "You go to bed."

He shakes his head, a swift snap of neck muscles.

They aren't talking about going to bed, not at all. Tingling races up and down her arms. She swallows and makes to look away, but she can't.

There is a moment's indecision in his whole body, a halt. As though invisible chains have snapped from his wrists and he can't decide if he is free to move or not. Irene lets her eyes remain on him: a question.

Welcome.

He reaches across the tray and brushes two knuckles against her cheek and the corner of her mouth. A lingering feathery touch that reaches almost to her lip.

_Oh. You are touching me. Sherlock. Sherlock…_

She blinks, unable to do anything, knowing her eyes are full of her thoughts, laid open like a painting. Written along the softening incline of her head, the black rounding of her eyes. Her hands collapsing like open blooms around the teacup.

Sherlock draws his hand back. Quite suddenly he is all cold again, his face closing down, his hands flattening on the hard table. In a moment he will act as though it has never happened. She cannot allow him to do this.

Her face flames where he has touched her. She finds herself rising to her feet, pushing the chair back.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she says, her voice as gentle as she can make it, seeing the realization of what he's done move through his frame, the beginning of a horrified paralysis. "I think I'll go to bed now. Sleep well."

As she passes him she lays a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, to tell him his touch wasn't unwanted, her fingers closing for a heartbeat on the warmth of his dressing gown. Then she snatches her hand away and hurries out, up the stairs on quick feet, away from the kitchen. As far as she can go without leaving the flat. She tumbles into her room and shuts the door.

For a moment she stares at the wallpaper: black on beige, thin tendrils and flowers curling upwards towards the ceiling.

She doesn't know what to think.

She closes her eyes and sees Sherlock's hand, reaching towards her face, curled in a tentative knot of fingers. The brush of his hand against her cheek. Cool skin. His green-grey eyes, wide open, black pupils huge. Her flower-face reflected in them.

Downstairs there's movement, the sound of a chair scraping back. Then silence.

She imagines Sherlock looking up at the ceiling, at where she stands. Where she stands, looking down at him in the kitchen. Separated by a single floor as wide as her hand. So few feet between them.


	9. Books

**Books**

A sad violin song, lamenting in the afternoon's dim light. Wavering hum of high notes, turning back and back on themselves in a repeated sigh. Sherlock's thoughtful playing.

Irene hunches over her computer, reading through the list of customers who want such-and-such books at such-and-such times. _Pride and Prejudice, Gone with the Wind, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Dark is Rising._ She has most of them at the store; the rest she'll have to order off Amazon. She types notes in the margin: _buy online; check to see for certain; save two copies for Mrs Reynolds._

Sherlock stands before the window, drawing his bow with long fingers across the violin strings. He's playing awfully depressing music, slinking sombre tones, human tears pressed out of wire and resin and horsehair.

She can only see the back of his head from her position at the kitchen table, so she can't tell what he's thinking. He's ramrod straight, shoulders strong, arm moving steadily back and forth, until he hits another sad note, and then he lingers, pulling the bow slowly away.

Footsteps coming up the stairs: loud and crisp. John.

Irene sinks a little lower in the hard chair and bends her eyes firmly to the computer screen. A Mr Banks wants _Peter Pan_, presumably for his son. She needs to buy another one of those; she'd sold her last copy the day before she'd left for Stratford.

_The noise of the bus. Rattling and squeaking, people talking, fiddling with their phones. It's dark outside. She sees a long tall form unfold from the doorway, walk towards her. He has red hair. It gleams in the fluorescent light._

"Afternoon," John says, now in the doorway.

Sherlock plays on, winding up a last few bars.

Irene raises her head to smile at John. She's a little too quick to look away, back to her computer. It's been three days since they've come home, and she knows what he must be thinking about her, Sherlock, their various past encounters with variously murderous people. He would know: John, the army man.

She hears him toss his newspaper on the arm of his chair.

Sherlock stops playing and swings around. "Anything?" His tone is doubtful.

"One suicide, someone got married, a duck pond's been bulldozed by accident, but no ducks were harmed in the process," John recites, sitting down and flipping the newspaper open again. "Nothing for you today. Lestrade's trying to find something in the cold cases, but he says you shouldn't get your hopes up."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, huffs, and swings around again. He jabs half-heartedly at the strings of his violin, plucks out three strangled notes. Then he sets the violin down and marches into the kitchen, to his experiment, where something is bubbling in a flask.

Irene watches out of the corner of her eye as he snatches up a tiny envelope, pulls it open, and upends it into the water. Instantly a terrible smell fills the kitchen. Irene coughs in horror, scrambling madly for her papers.

"What's that?" John says sharply.

"Experiment," Sherlock says.

Both Irene and John mouth the word along with him, John's face alight with an inexpressible joy.

Irene pulls her laptop off the table, her papers under one arm. Her chair squeaks over the floor. "Honestly, Sherlock, I was trying to work."

Sherlock sniffs, somehow unaffected by the awful aroma. "It had reached the boiling point. I had to add the powdered marrow."

Irene strides out of the kitchen, appropriates Sherlock's armchair, and settles down to work again. In the kitchen, Sherlock promptly moves beakers and a rack of test tubes to the table, ignoring the red tablecloth folded on the edge. John's opening windows, muttering under his breath. Something about _I'm Sherlock Holmes, and I never listen to… _

For a moment she forgets about the two of them, interested in finding books on Amazon, making a little list in Notepad about ones she wants for herself. Fresh air wafts into the room, dissolving the nasty odour; a conversation happens around her: John asking Sherlock where his laptop is, Sherlock being snippy but humorous, because John chuckles once or twice. Arguing about the lack of food in the fridge. Something addressed to her. It better not be about shopping at Tesco's.

"What?" She looks up from the rapidly growing list of books. "Did you say something?"

John peers out at her from the kitchen. "I was asking if you're going to be free next Saturday. Lestrade and Molly want to have a get together; they've invited everyone."

Sherlock is smirking into his microscope. "Engagement."

Irene, who's trying to decide between earning money and going to the party, snaps her attention to him. "Really?"

"No, I'm just _guessing_," Sherlock drawls. He snaps out one slide and puts in another. "Yes, of course they're engaged, otherwise they wouldn't be inviting everyone over."

John smiles wryly at Irene. "Yes. Well, that makes more sense. I was wondering why they were so insistent that everyone come. Well. Engaged. Molly Hooper engaged."

"That's not very nice," Irene says. She saves her list, shuts the lid of her laptop. "She's a perfectly eligible girl." For a second she gazes into space, imagining Molly in a wedding gown, Lestrade in a tuxedo. Gleaming smiles; Molly's hair done up. "I'm happy for them. I can make it to the party. What time?"

"Eight," John says. He looks at Sherlock. "You coming?"

"Dull," Sherlock says. He reaches for another slide, holds it up.

"It'll be fun," John coaxes. "Lestrade said Molly's working on a paper. It's about matter commonly trapped in pores after death. She might want to ask your opinion. Weren't you doing an experiment on human skin yesterday?"

Irene smiles behind the book she's taken from Sherlock's music stand, _Harpsichords in the Nineteenth Century._ If that doesn't prod Sherlock into going, she's not sure what will. She waits, and then, sure enough –

"Alright," says Sherlock, snapping off the end of the word.

Irene bites her lip to hold in her laughter.

She feels Sherlock's eyes on her and looks up, all innocence. "What?"

"Nothing," Sherlock hisses, and goes back to his slides. John smiles in triumph and opens the fridge, apparently forgetting it's empty.

"There's nothing to eat," he says, peering into its frosty depths. "Did we really eat all those scones for breakfast? I only had two."

"I had one," Irene says. "The rest were already gone by the time I got up." She turns a page of Sherlock's book. Really, this is extremely boring. The font is tiny; the pages go on for miles. Does he read this to help him sleep? Is it just for show?

Sherlock says nothing. It's a clear sign of his guilt.

"Really?" John says, shutting the door. "You ate _six_ scones? And almost half of that casserole last night. What's happening to you?"

He's making a joke, but Sherlock still says nothing, and Irene lowers the book slowly. Sherlock's standing frozen over his microscope, his pale lips tight, his eyes narrowed. An old memory, Irene is certain, has surfaced in his mind and taken over: some foe collapsing broken at his feet, perhaps Moriarty's dead stare. Something John's just said has struck a vein and released a flood of septic acid trauma.

John catches her eye: she shakes her head _no_, and he takes a step back, shoving his hands into his pockets. His eyes travel over Sherlock's tense form, cataloguing.

"Never mind," he says. "At least you've finally learned to eat."

"I'm not on a case," Sherlock says, speaking at last.

Irene exhales silently. John takes his hands out of his pockets and folds his arms over his chest.

"Sherlock," he says, and then looks out into the sitting room. "And you too, Irene. There's something I'd like to talk to both of you about."

_He stands before the refrigerator, one hand on the open door. Light spilling out, turning his red hair orange at the tips. A growl of a voice._

_"__Go…"_

The sound of glass under metal clips. _Click. Snap. Snap. _She lurches back to awareness.

Sherlock's put another slide in, breaking the memory, saving her before John notices her staring blindly into space. "Busy, John."

Irene sinks lower in her chair, suddenly quite interested in this doorstop of a book. She doesn't have time to talk to John right now. She has to order things off Amazon. She has to read this. There's nothing she can say to convince John she's busy – she opens her mouth to lie –

John holds up a hand before she can make excuses as well. "Fine, then. Later. After dinner. I'm calling for a take-away, now."

Irene stares at the foggy pages, hearing without listening as John speaks into the landline. A black form passes her and sinks down on the armrest of her chair, a warm heavy weight against her arm. She glances up in surprise.

Sherlock looks down at her. He's not wearing his coat, and his neck is white and bare behind the grey opening of his shirt. It's not too tight anymore, not since he'd left. None of his shirts are too tight.

"Your arm's almost healed," he says, nodding down at her bandaged forearm. Irene looks down at the white strips of gauze. She can see a dim line of scraggly purple-red underneath.

"Thanks to your stitches," she agrees, turning a page of his book. "Have you actually read this?"

He shifts beside her, trying to get comfortable on the sagging leather. "Twice."

"Whatever for?" she demands. She moves over a little. He's a bit in her space.

"A case," Sherlock says, finally sitting still. "The earmarked pages are the ones I read thrice."

The whole book is riddled with turned-down corners, top and bottom, one page bent almost in half, and Irene stares in disbelief at them. "That's impossible. This thing is dull as a brick. The author's incredibly longwinded and really pompous."

"The author was the murderer," Sherlock says. "I read it in order to solve the problem of his alibi."

She wants to hear the rest of the details, and she's about to ask when John comes into the sitting room, his careworn face so kind when he looks at her that she almost breaks into tears. She doesn't want to talk to him about Moran. She doesn't want to talk to him about going to see a therapist.

She must have shivered or convulsed or something, because Sherlock's hands reach down and close the book.

"You'll bend the spine," he says, disapproving, and takes it into his lap. He fiddles with the pages, humming under his breath as he goes from chapter to chapter.

John sits down in his chair, shuffles his newspaper. There's something so stoic and persevering in his movements that she has to swallow a lump in her throat. He'd been like this after Sherlock left: soldiering on, making the best of it. Smiling at her, trying to listen when she talked, kind to Lestrade, even polite to Donovan. Never complaining.

Sherlock's still humming, turning pages, and the warm closeness of him beside her is reassuring in a way she can't quantify. He closes the book, resting it on his knee, and looks across the room at John.

"Anything on telly?"

"Your favourite crap shows," John says with relish. He folds up the newspaper and, after realizing there's nowhere else to put it, sets it neatly on the ground. Irene tries not to grimace. _Men._

Everything is always a mess here. Or it was. Now it is again. Papers and books, empty tea mugs, a pair of socks hanging from the bookshelf, the skull picture askew, a new gouge in the wall from when Sherlock shot off a flare gun on Tuesday "to examine the quality of light within a confined area," which John called a chance to examine "stupidity within a shared flat." (He'd confiscated the flare gun and hid it upstairs, where he and Irene had hidden everything else like that.)

She supposes it could be a lot worse.

She knows it can.

While Sherlock makes disparaging comments about the people on the telly, she relaxes stealthily against his side, comfortably warm. The TV's barking, John tapping slowly on his laptop, Sherlock's condescending low voice: it all drops away, a murmur in the background, until she knows she's safe, and there's nothing she has to do.

Irene forgets, just for a moment, she forgets everything, and rests.


	10. Leaf

**Leaf**

_Two days later:_

Irene's at the bookstore, her bookstore. _S. Dedalus' Books._ Hardly anyone gets the name; people tell her that "Dedalus" is spelled with another 'A,' or ask her if her surname is Dedalus, or if the store was left to her by a distant relative called Dedalus.

She's considering changing the name, seeing as she didn't choose it (_Thank you, Ms Demetrius, thank you so very much; you and your preoccupation with Joyce_). Something like _Better Books, _or _Rambling Reads. _No, those are terrible. Even worse.

It's the middle of the night, and leaves keep falling out of the sky and dashing themselves against the windowpanes, dying little deaths over and over again in flurries of red and purple. They dance under the streetlights in the wind.

She had called John earlier to tell him she'd be late.

He had answered in a hurry, his voice a rush of syllables. He'd sounded distracted and exhilarated: two things not inapposite. He'd been walking quickly, she thought, judging from his shortened breath. He was with Sherlock; they were on a new case. Their first.

Since the fall.

She'd like to go home and hear about its conclusion, but she can't leave the bookstore.

Irene's sitting by the window, on the hard carpet between two mahogany bookshelves. She leans against the left one, her head propped up by one of the wooden shelves. Books digging into her spine, shoulders. Her arms clamped around her legs. Ink stains on her fingertips. Receipts, cash box, books around her. Her pen lying by her foot. Unfinished work.

There's nothing physically wrong with her. She could stand up and walk out right now, leave it all behind. Come back tomorrow and try again.

It's just that she's incapable of going home.

Two years is a long time.

Seven days is a long time.

She worked herself to the bone today, thinking it would calm her enough so that she could go home and sleep, really sleep. Sleep without dreaming of Moran's red hair, his callous cruelty, his hands on her, his eyes on her, his damned camera.

Dreaming of Sherlock wounded and Sherlock fighting for his life in some godforsaken alley, miles from home, of the scars on his hands and neck and arms, crisscrossing his chest like a poor man's map of London.

So many wounds, internal and external, mental and physical, day and night. They all blend together and surge into her head, so she wakes in panics and cold sweats.

Her peace of mind, her knowledge of joy, her optimism that came from years of small problems, the sorts that don't scar you, that don't leave you gasping, that don't come from your friend and – _but no_ – leaving you via suicide, via lie.

The sorts of problems that come from waking up to find yourself chained to a wall.

Wounds that won't heal.

She's afraid.

She had thought she knew what the worst fear was, down there below that house, facing Sebastian Moran. A man with a gun and the will to use it, a man with reaching hands and nothing behind his eyes. But this is far worse.

_Oh, God. Don't make me go to a stranger and tell them about my time there. Don't make me go tell someone. I can't tell Sherlock. I couldn't tell John. Both almost know, but my mouth won't open even for them._

_I don't always dream about it at night. It's just those waking dreams that get me, halfway between here and there: standing in front of a refrigerator, passing a roaring steaming bus. Daylight terrors._

_Then I see it. There. There he is, showing up like a lost sock. Oh, that's where I left you. Red hair, right? Fists like rocks?_

_Only seven days and my mind is scrambled._

_How can Sherlock still be walking, wearing his coat, scarf cinched around his neck?_

_Tell me his secret._

_You talk. You talk to me. I won't._

_John wants us to go to therapy._

"I would like to make you happy, but I can't," she tells James Joyce's whiskered amiable face, staring up at her from _Dubliners._ "Maybe therapy works, but I can't do it. John, you have to believe me – I can't do it. I won't."

A cascade of bells, the sound of the door opening. Irene scrambles to her feet, papers flying like the leaves outside. She snatches up her pen.

_Even a small object can be a good weapon, if it is pointed and easily concealed._

She'd thought she'd locked the door.

"You did," says Sherlock.

Irene swallows a curse. _What's gotten into you, dear? Control yourself. What kind of language are you supposed to be using…?_

_(Shut up, Stepmother.)_

He's standing at the end of the aisle, his coat gaping open, hair askew, one hand holding a key at his side. Oh, it's the spare copy she'd given him and John. Before everything. His scarf is dripping from his neck in a wave of purple-blue, fringe like coiled water.

"I thought you'd still be here, so I left John at home and came to look," he's saying, walking towards her. "Did you fall asleep?" He deduces her with a single up-and-down look. "No. You were thinking. Your hair is bent from where you leaned against that shelf. But you're shaking: obviously dehydrated. You've been working all day, doing extra. Doing too much."

"You don't need to deduce me," she says.

She puts the pen on the shelf. No need for weapons. Just words.

_I drank the last of my water bottle hours ago. Should have refilled it. Was rather busy, though, with customers, making coffee, shelving new books. You can see that too, I'm sure. _

"I was going to tell you about being late. But I told J–"

"Were you?" He's beside her now, looking down at the open cash box, crumpled receipts, inky list of books sold. So tall. A light sweat over his nose, cheekbones. "Which part of it? Your lateness, or the rest of it?"

She crouches down and sweeps the receipts into the cash box, tipping it on its side like a dustpan. "What do you mean?"

Irritation in his voice. "You're trying to wear yourself out. It's working. Well, almost. But John's worried about you. So stop – stop –"

He cuts himself off and kneels beside her, tense. One hand convulses on the carpet, latches around a receipt and launches it into her box.

Irene looks up into those bottle-green eyes. "Stop what, Sherlock? You're doing the same thing. Did you solve your case in two hours or one?"

_You're baiting him. (You're the bait.) Hear the malice in your voice. You can't catch flies with vinegar._

"Six hours. Before dinner. After you called and said you'd be late." His eyes scythe across her face. He snatches up a book and shelves it, reaching for another, then another. Hands spinning like glossy pinwheels. "Yes, I am doing the same thing, but much less noticeably, I must say. John seems to be taken in by _my_ actions, but _yours_ –"

"He can't be any more worried about me than he is about you. He knows you a whole lot better than he knows me. Don't delude yourself."

She's the one to break off this time, aware she's working herself into a rage. _I never wanted to hurt you. Fresh wounds in your eyes. _

"Sherlock," she says, getting up, turning away so she doesn't have to see his face sliding into expressionlessness, "leave it. Leave the books. Let's go home."

The thump of books into their places. A small wind brushes past her, and Sherlock has hold of her hand.

Long warm fingers, warmer than she'd expected him to be. She's not warm, not cold. Somewhere in between. His hand slides up her fingers and close around her wrist, his thumb soft and firm on her furious pulse.

Irene takes a deep breath. _Why… why are you doing this? What has happened to you?_

He tugs gently, and she walks with him down the aisle, stepping over books.

They're not even to the end of the row before he starts speaking.

"Today after you left for work Lestrade texted me and asked if I would consult with him on a case. I agreed, so John and I took a cab to Rainham Marshes, where Lestrade introduced us to Simon Holden, fifty-three years old, half-sunken in the marsh with a blue plastic bag over his head."

He waits for her to interrupt, but she doesn't.

His skin is so warm against her own.

"There were bits of white paper found with the body, unreadable. John agreed with me that Holden had been there no more than three days, despite signs of decomposition and disturbance by the marsh wildlife. I examined the body and deduced that Holden was a secretary: attractive, well-cared for, accustomed to sitting behind a desk, soft calluses on his fingertips from typing, dressed in casual business clothing. There were foil-wrapped chocolates in his pockets and coffee stains on his teeth."

They're outside. Sherlock lets go of her wrist so she can turn the key in the door. She tugs on the handle to make sure it's locked, turns away. They walk down the street in the dry fall wind. Her coat blows open and she snatches at its flaps, buttoning madly.

"The killer had left behind Holden's wallet and identification. John went to Holden's home address."

Sherlock waves down a cab and they climb in; she tells the driver _Baker Street_.

"I went to his work, Conway and Martin Law Firm, where I spoke to his employer, a Mrs Georgina Yaxley. She told me that Holden had been depressed, that he was drinking heavily, complaining of painful headaches, and skipping work. She said that he'd been receiving mysterious gifts and letters. The gifts were always boxes of chocolates, which he threw away unopened. The letters, he saved. She thought he was having an affair, or recovering from one, but he had often spoken to her about his happy family life."

The cab drifts past streetlights, alleyways, pavements.

"She opened her desk and gave me the remnants of one of the letters: bits of newspaper cuttings glued onto white printer paper. I brought them with me when I left."

He reaches into his pocket and takes out a piece of notebook paper with his handwriting.

Irene takes it. He's kept the odd capitalization, weird spacing, bolded letters. It looks demented, the product of enraged and futile thinking.

_yO __**u**__ PrO missed, l__**ove**__, yO__**u**__'d stoP. Y __**o**__u di__**d**__!_

"I brought it to the lab to examine before I pieced it back together. There were a few short human hairs embedded in the craft glue, along with dandruff, a tiny amount of Isotretinoin, and fragments of wood."

Sherlock sees her question. "Isotretinoin is the main ingredient in Acutane, a very powerful acne medicine; it costs quite a bit. I called John. He didn't answer. I waited an hour. He did not respond even by then, so I decided that he was incapable of answering."

He takes a deep breath. Irene watches his face shift under the moving streetlights: worry, remembrance. He'd been afraid for John's safety today, afraid as she'd been for herself. Why hadn't she considered that John and he could've been in danger? She'd been selfish, curled up on the bookstore floor, overwhelmed by hysterical emotion. _Stupid girl._

"I went to Holden's house. John was fine." Sherlock huffs out his breath: impatience and relief. "He'd turned his phone on silent, said it was so he wouldn't disturb the grieving family. He was consoling Jack Holden, fifteen, Simon's only child. I met Mrs Emily Holden, fifty-two, making tea. Both seemed jittery. I asked to use the guest bathroom, but I searched their bedrooms instead."

Irene can see him slipping into their rooms, feet silent on the floor, a black soundless figure. Like a giant bat. She smiles.

Sherlock is looking out his window, fingers under his chin, remembering. "Jack had a hamster; there were wood shavings in its cage. A bottle of craft glue on his desk. In his bathroom I found Acutane, his prescription half full. I took samples, said goodbye to the Holdens, took John with me, and went back to the lab."

She feels it's obvious who the killer is. Why is he stalling?

"I compared the samples from Jack's room to the ones from the letter. Everything matched except for the dandruff. Then John remembered Mrs Holden had been wearing white. We went back to the house and confronted the Holdens with the evidence. Jack said he'd written the letter; Mrs Holden said she'd posted it. Both were confused. They told us that it was a prank. Mr Holden had been in on the joke."

His shoulders sag at this mediocre turn.

"Every October they'd play tricks on one member of the family, leading up to Halloween: it was Simon's turn this year. They sent him the letters and chocolates as a joke. Last year Simon and Emily had sent dead flowers and mouldy apple turnovers to Jack's school."

He's clearly disturbed by this notion of family pranking. Irene tries not to smile.

"So the killer?"

Sherlock taps his fingers together. "We went back to the morgue and I thought about the staging of the body. The newspaper bag over his head – newspaper because it was small and rectangular, no other bags are like that – and the white paper scattered in the marsh. Whoever had planted them had wanted us to think the Holden family had killed him. John suggested that they had killed him anyways, but they hadn't lied to me when I asked if they had. I _knew_ they hadn't lied. Then I remembered Mrs Yaxley. His employer."

"She was the one who told you about the letters," Irene says. "She'd hinted at an affair, or the ending of one."

"Yes, the _recovering_ from one. Her precise words. I went back to his work to confirm my hypothesis. Her desk was bare of non-essentials, but she had photos of family members by her computer, none recent. I asked after her children and she said she'd had a divorce and didn't see them often. But she had kept her last name. She was on break, so she went to make a cup of coffee. John went with her to act as a distraction. I looked in her desk and found a manual on bird-watching, hardly opened, brand-new."

They are almost back to the flat.

"Bird-watching is one of the main activities at Rainham Marshes. Lestrade got a warrant for her computer and read through her history. She'd bought two tickets online, gone there three days ago with Mr Holden. She'd brought an old newspaper bag in case she found feathers. He had one of the prank letters in his pocket, from that morning's mail delivery. It fell out of his pocket when they were walking along the marsh. Mrs Yaxley picked it up and read it on the sly."

He reaches into his coat and draws out another letter, this one crumpled and bent and ripped almost in half, shredded along the edges. It's been sheathed in an evidence bag to protect it. "Lestrade found it half-buried in the mud, several meters away from the body."

_I lOve y__**o**__U deAr s__**i**__mo__**n **__H. I __**k**__Now That now._

Irene squints at the capitals in the flickering light. _IOU a hint._ "What was the hint?"

Sherlock waves a distracted hand, frowning. "It doesn't matter what the hint was, it matters _how_ he was _killed_. That's why I took the case: he was murdered in a personal manner, the bag over the head to suffocate him, so the killer had close contact throughout his death, signifying pleasure, but the bits of paper scattered around his body showed remorse. But it wasn't remorse for him, because he was handled roughly even after the paper was scattered – it was regret for his family_. _We brought Mrs Yaxley down to the station, confronted her with the evidence. She confessed."

She sees the gears of the case drop into place, presenting her with the answer to Mrs Yaxley's insane actions, and the cab whirs to a halt before 221B. They get out, Sherlock handing the driver a handful of cash. The wind whips their faces bare and Sherlock unlocks the door before they're swept away into the night.

"She thought he was having an affair," Irene whispers, in order to avoid waking Mrs Hudson. They climb the stairs.

"She thought she was doing his family a favour by killing him. Or was it some sort of personal justice? Because she felt that he didn't deserve to have a happy family life if he was sleeping with someone else. Because she'd been divorced and lost her own family."

"Perhaps," Sherlock says, indifferent to Mrs Yaxley's motives. Irene grins; he's never cared for the personal aspects of his cases.

She sees him glance down at her. They've paused in the middle of the sitting room, equidistant from the two armchairs. It's dark, no lights on; John's upstairs and asleep by now. She pulls out her mobile phone, slips it back into her pocket. 1:38. Late.

"Are you feeling better?"

She looks up at Sherlock. He'd told her the story of his case as a distraction, an unfolding puzzle to focus and calm her mind. There's a bright red-orange leaf caught in his dark hair, spiky, like a scarecrow's open hand. She reaches up, her fingers edging past his cheekbone, past his blinking dark eyes, and pulls it free.

"Yes," she says. She holds out the leaf to him, a silly gift of wind and air. "Thank you."

Sherlock takes the leaf, surprising her. Rubs its dry silkiness between his fingers.

"I thought it would help," he says.

'_Did you see that?' _his eyes ask her._ 'I stopped you from panicking. Me, Sherlock Holmes. Did you see it?'_

"You were right," she replies.

_About everything. Almost everything, even up to your own death. Except for that part about sentiment._

She can see that Sherlock's mouth is wavering on the edge of a smile. His brightening eyes fasten on hers. His long lips part. For a long moment his gaze traces the crown of her head, her raised face, her windswept hair. She watches him, her pulse thrumming in the very top of her spine.

John had told her once that Sherlock called him a 'conductor of light.'

_So what am __**I**__ to you?_

His fingers pause on the leaf.

"Goodnight," Irene says. She moves slowly around him, sorry to leave, but knowing she'll be sorrier if she stays. "I should probably head up to bed. See you tomorrow."

She'd meant to say something else, more along the lines of _here I am, waiting for you to ask me what you asked me two years ago, waiting for you to lean down and –_ but she wants this moment to stand untarnished. And she doesn't know what he would have done, had she stayed.

This moment should be simple, radiant for both of them: an open music box, two figurines twirling over red velvet. Sherlock back from the dead, glowing before her; his first case solved. She, his friend, solved as well.

She hopes he understands.


	11. Ghost

**Ghost**

_They're packing up his things. The violin is placed in the crushed velvet case, the lid shut, metal snaps closed. John takes books down from the shelves, nestles them carefully in boxes. Mrs Hudson washes out dirty test tubes and beakers in the sink. She's wearing yellow rubber gloves. Her lips are pinched tight, her eyes squinted as she scrubs at a stain. Trying not to cry._

_John's shoulders are hunched inside his brown jumper, his steps tight and controlled. He reaches for another book, glances hurriedly at the cover, puts it in the box at his feet._

_Irene goes upstairs to Sherlock's room, opens the door. She's holding a stack of cardboard boxes in her arms._

_Trapped air wafts out: Sherlock's smell. The faint tang of fine shampoo and conditioner, the sharpness that can only be nicotine, the electric snap of chemicals, the mustiness of old books. It hits her in the face. His ghost rises up before her, summoned involuntarily, then fades. _

_Her eyes fill with tears._

_She goes in, shuts the door behind her, flicks on the light. Turns to set the boxes on the floor. Straightens up, catches sight of the unmade bed: Sherlock never makes –_

_He never made his bed. He was so messy._

_The tears slide down her cheeks. She presses a finger horizontally to her lips. She bends and lifts the first of the boxes, steps away from the bed, turning her back to it, as if she can control her grief in such a fashion._

_The closet is standing ajar: a row of long-sleeved shirts on hangers, folded trousers on the upper shelves. Expensive shoes lined up end to end._

_Irene kneels on the carpet and lifts out a pair of glossy black shoes, so familiar, sets them in the bottom of the box. Downstairs she hears something fall from the bookshelf and shatter._

_One of Sherlock's things. Broken now. The tap water in the kitchen switches off._

_Thumping of a fist against the wall, powerful. John's muffled curse._

_Then a terrible endless sound that can only be him crying. And Mrs Hudson's soft murmurs to him, the sound of comfort, broken by distance._

_She reaches for another pair of shoes, ignoring the tears slipping down her face._

* * *

It is Saturday morning, the day of Molly's party. Slumped on the couch, eating slightly stale cereal, wearing her pyjamas, Irene is reading bits of Joyce's _Dubliners_ in hopes of finding another name for the bookstore. As she flips through "Eveline," as conflicted as always about the melancholy ending, her phone buzzes.

_Where are you?_

_SH_

Frowning, Irene writes back: _At the flat. Why? What's up?_

A small sinkhole widens in her stomach, as she contemplates why Sherlock could be asking her this. He'd left early this morning, and his hastily scrawled note had been stuck to the fridge door when she'd gotten up.

_Gone to the morgue, _it had read._ Be back soon. SH._

John is out with Mary, bird-watching in Rainham Marshes (now that the area's been reopened). They aren't supposed to be home till later, since they're going to grab lunch as well. Irene wonders if Sherlock's interrupted their date, showed up without an invite. (Or, knowing him, _with_ one.) But that's unlikely; he's probably still at the lab. He shouldn't be texting her now. He knows she can't help him with any sort of corpse-related activities.

Her phone lights up again.

_Need a consultation. Come to the morgue. Usual place. _

_SH_

She has no idea what he means. She types: _Consultation about what? You know I try to avoid dead bodies whenever possible._

Barely fifteen seconds passes and then he's sent her another text.

_Please._

_SH_

With a sigh, Irene replies: _Alright. Give me ten minutes to get ready._

She stands up and carries her empty cereal bowl into the kitchen. If there's a corpse waiting in the morgue for her when she arrives, she's turning around and going straight home again.

* * *

Sherlock meets her at the entrance to the morgue, his hands in the pockets of his coat. Even as she walks towards him she can see that he's upset: he's holding himself stiffly upright. As if he's just gotten bad news.

He sees her, nods once, and goes inside. Irene passes through the double doors behind him. They crash to behind her, the noise reverberating.

The morgue is empty, none of the steel gurneys occupied, no Molly flitting around with scalpels and clipboards. Irene relaxes, relieved that there aren't any bodies. A microscope sits at the edge of one of the counters. A stack of manila folders teeters beside it.

Sherlock has retreated to stand by the microscope, looking strangely bewildered.

"What's wrong?" she says, now truly worried. There's nowhere for her to sit or lean against, so she walks towards him, edging around the counters, stops a few feet away. _Not too close._ "Has something happened?"

Sherlock clears his throat. Looks away. "No. But."

He falters, then tries again. "I… texted John to ask if he wanted to look over some cold case files." Pauses. "He said he couldn't. He was on a date. With Mary."

There's a slight emphasis on the last word, and Irene files this away in the back of her head for later.

"Okay, yeah, he might have been a little distracted at the time," she says. "And I think he told us about the date yesterday. Which cases?"

Sherlock takes his hands out of his pockets, brushes a hand over the stack of folders. "All of these. I was thinking – well, I wanted to look through half of them while John looked through the others. For anomalies, missing evidence, that sort of thing." He lifts off the top folder and hands it to her.

Irene opens it, finds a corpse staring blindly up at her. _Okay, yikes._ She flips it shut and looks up at Sherlock.

His quick eyes are dancing over her; he drops his hands into his pockets, then pulls them out again; turns on his heel and looks into the eyepiece of his microscope. She can't tell what he's thinking, only that he's quite upset.

_Well, here goes nothing. You'd better be nice, Sherlock. I could be at home right now, eating bad cereal and reading Dubliners._

"Do you want me to go through these with you?" she ventures.

He stops fiddling with his collar (he's long since forgotten about the microscope) and looks at her in surprise. "Oh. Well. That would work."

Irene feels a surge of exasperation, followed by pity. "Yes," she says. "I'm sure it would. Here, give me the rest of the ones you want me to do. We'll have to start now if we want to finish any of it by lunch."

"_Lunch_," Sherlock scoffs, nudging the folders towards her with one hand. "You people are always thinking about sustenance. What about _crime?_"

"That's what we've got you for," Irene replies, dragging a stool out from under the counter. "Here." She shoves it at him, then pulls another out for herself. "You don't want to stand the whole time."

Sherlock eyes the stool with dispassion. He's obviously not going to use it.

Irene sits down and opens the first folder. _No need for hysterics. It's just a dead guy, _she tells herself. _Let's see. Start with the victim. Matthew Reynolds. Found on October 12, 1981, in Battersea Power Station…_

* * *

Two hours later she's rubbing her hands together, trying to keep warm in the icebox of the morgue, seven pages of handwritten, painstaking notes curling up on the counter beside the open folders. She's given up on trying to _solve_ the cases or find anything that would lead to their solving; she simply writes down items that catch her attention, such as inconsistencies in interviews, lack of evidence, witnesses that were never questioned.

She's not a detective, just a sort of poorly trained reporter.

Sherlock's still bent over his microscope, squinting down at slides, putting new ones in and taking them out. Occasionally he adds chemicals together in petri dishes and watches them fizzle.

She glances up at him now, a niggling worry prodding at the back of her mind. He doesn't really seem to be _doing_ anything. In fact, she's almost certain that the slide he's looking at right now is the same one he put in a half hour ago. Red speckles in a yellow solution. Yes, it's the same.

"Do you want to get lunch?"

He snaps his head up. Brilliant eyes wide, like he'd forgotten she was there. A mild panic in his face.

_You are so very tense._

"I could get some coffee, at least," she says, projecting a serenity she doesn't feel. Is it the harsh light, or are those shadows under his eyes? _You should be sleeping, Sherlock, even if I can't._ "I'll drop by the vending machines."

She's off her stool and almost to the doors when he speaks.

"Wait," he says, and walks away from the microscope, slipping a hand into the pocket of his discarded coat. He takes out his wallet, extracts his debit card. Tries to hand it to her. "Here."

_Your kindness tastes like tears._

"Oh, no, I have cash," Irene says, waving it away, smiling_._ "Do you want something besides coffee? Some crisps? Fruit?"

"Just coffee," he says, "with–"

"I know how you like your coffee," she says, surprised that he doesn't know this, and that it hurts her. _Do you think I've forgotten? How could I have forgotten that?_

There's a pause. Then he spins around, heading back to his microscope. "Right."

Irene, clenching her jaw to keep all of her inopportune thoughts inside her head, goes out of the morgue.

* * *

She sets his coffee down beside him. _Black, two sugars._ Then she goes around the counter, retrieves her stool, and brings it to the opposite side of his counter. She puts her own coffee before her, along with a white paper bag of blueberry muffins. Two of them, in case she can convince Sherlock to eat.

_You're so thin_

_Like a scarecrow_

_Famished straw face_

_Held unnaturally_

_Sticks and hay_

_Afraid_

He looks up from his microscope when she sits down.

"You've finished your files?" he inquires, incredulous. His skin glows white under the fluorescent lights.

Irene opens her bag. "No. I'm taking a break. I did look through three of them, though. Couldn't solve any, but I took notes. You can read them later. Here, do you want a muffin? They're those blueberry ones you like."

She amends this white lie in her head. _Well, if they're like the blueberry muffin I bought you a full two years ago, which you ate half of and declared 'passable, if not palatable,' you might like this one. At least, I think you said those words. It was a long time ago._

Sherlock looks down at the muffin she's pushing towards him. "No. Thank you."

She leaves it there anyways, a little blue-and-white soldier standing at doughy attention, and unwraps hers from its green paper covering. Sometimes he'll eat something if he's not thinking about it, if his hand happens upon it while he's working. Which is why she and John and Mrs Hudson used to litter plates of food around the flat when he was on a case.

"The party's tonight," she says. "Did you get Molly or Greg anything?"

"What?" he says, clearly not listening. He marks something off on a sheet of paper, turns back to his slides.

"Molly's engagement party," Irene repeats patiently, breaking her muffin in half. She pops a crumbling section in her mouth. Mmm. Quite a lot of blueberries in that bite. "John bought her and Lestrade matching coffee mugs."

"No," Sherlock says, his tone bland.

She thinks he's saying it automatically, responding to a question she hasn't asked, and casts around for another subject.

_Perhaps you should stop talking to him. It's not working. It's never worked._

_(Oh, shut it. You're getting maudlin.)_

Sherlock turns off the microscope: the little light dies above the slide, and his face loses some of its colourlessness.

He looks down at the folders, sprawled open across the countertop. He reaches out and sweeps them together, shoves them further down the table. They collapse in a heap, papers, photographs, edges fluttering in unison. Irene watches him, ready to say something, to do something.

_Let me help you. Please._

Sherlock sits down on his stool, clasps his fingers under his chin, and looks at her. _Through_ her, for a moment, like she's a TV screen. Then his eyes refocus on hers, and she sees that his irises are slightly mismatched in this light, pale green opposite pale green-blue, like frozen water.

"No, I haven't bought Molly anything," he says. He watches her without moving. An intent leopard.

Then he shakes his head suddenly, as if to cast aside that subject; his curls bounce and settle.

"Irene," he says. "I am not the same person who left you and John."

Irene puts down the remainder of her muffin, abruptly dry-mouthed. _Not hungry._

"Oh."

She doesn't know what that means. In what context? Physically, yes: battered, scarred, older, thinner. Mentally? Emotionally?

_I know you are different._

Sherlock's still waiting for her to say something, as if she hasn't reached the right conclusion yet. Irene moistens the top of her mouth, swallows stickily.

"In what way?" she asks.

He blinks. Frowns. "Several ways. But I mean – I mean – you remember when I found you. At the house."

(His code word for Moran: _the house_. Hers: _the basement._)

Irene remembers exactly how he'd found her. How he'd acted. The desperate hug: not a Sherlockian action. And later: the nightmares in the dark, curling into her embrace, his head nestled into her shoulder, when she told him John would want him back. Terror writ across his face when he'd first woken.

His yearning for touch: then – and now – his fingers on her wrist, knuckles brushing her cheek.

"You were worried about me," she says, selecting her words carefully. "And you were worried about having – left. And John, too; you were worried about how he'd react to you coming home. It was understandable."

"_No_," Sherlock says, dropping his hands to the counter, suddenly distressed. "I meant – _now_ I am different. Before –" he drags his fingers through his hair, squeezing his eyes closed so that tiny wrinkles radiate towards his temples "- before I didn't have this,_ this_ _thing_ in my head, these _feelings! _They're always there now, all the time. I am _raw_. Exposed. I could switch them off, before. Now I can't."

He sighs in furious exasperation, bends towards the counter, crooked hands still in his hair.

Irene leans forward, hesitates, and finally curls her hand around one of his thin wrists. She tugs, and he lets go of his hair, slowly raising his head. His eyes are gleaming with moisture: swimming iridescent green.

"You're grieving," she tells him. Something flits across his face: wonder? "I would know."

"Grieving," he repeats. He looks at her. "Grieving for _what?_ I'm back. I shouldn't be so – so –"

He doesn't have the words for his inner conflict; she can see it.

"When you left, you lost us," Irene says. "Even though you knew you'd come back. You knew that we would grieve for you. That hurt you." A lump rises in her throat, and she has to dig her fingernails into her thigh so she can go on. "Sherlock, you couldn't have faked your death without being affected. And the things you did – to bring down Moriarty's empire –"

The tendons in his wrist bounce, twinging against her palm.

She stops. He hasn't actually told her what he did, but she's made her own inferences, based on how badly he'd reacted.

"You did what you thought was right," she tells him. "And it's hurt you. You feel like you can't go on, that these feelings aren't ever going to end. But they do. I promise they do."

"Did they?" he says. Blinking furiously. "For you?"

_Have you stabbed a scalpel into my heart? Must you ask that question? Now I have to answer._

_("For a while I pretended you weren't dead. Not fallen from the hospital: you were not dead, your arms not outstretched, your face not bloody. All negation. I crept around the flat in secret glee, thinking you'd come home in a month, two months. But John grieved. _

_I realized how insane the idea was: he'd seen you die. He was a doctor. You were dead. _

_I went back to grieving. Tears at night, when no one could hear. Sitting in the flat on weekends. Going to work on weekdays. Automatic. Robotic. Holding myself together around a wound. I was going to move in over the bookstore, move out of Baker Street. So much pain there, in the flat, in me._

_And then… then Moran found me, and he told me:_

_'__I want Sherlock Holmes.'_

_By then I had finally discarded my delusion, slipped out of its clinging skin like a snake. I was terrified to hope again, terrified I was going insane._

_I grieved for you, in the basement, all over again._

_Then you came and found me. _

_And you were alive.")_

_Don't tell him this._

She is aware that his other hand has grasped hers, where she holds his wrist. Bright grey-green eyes looking directly into hers.

No way to lie.

Irene says to him, "I don't know."


	12. Heart

**Heart**

Sherlock is understandably thrown by this, his black eyebrows contracting, but he only leans forward, unspeaking. Irene meets his penetrating gaze with as much equanimity as she can, fighting the urge to pull her hand away. His pulse taps steadily against her palm. She wants to act calmly, unemotionally. He will understand her better that way.

"You're still grieving," he clarifies. "For me."

Irene nods, knowing her voice is unstable.

"Why? And –" he hesitates. "Is John? Is he still grieving for me? I don't understand. Why are you still grieving?"

It's too much, the question. So simple and so _Sherlock_, so pointed, even though he may not mean to be. The bare confusion in his face is like a brand against her cheek. Her eyes sting. She lets go of his wrist; he releases her hand, and she pulls her arms to herself. She forms fists around the edges of her stool.

"Sherlock," she says, and can't go on.

She looks away, past him, to the wall, takes a deep breath. "John is your best friend."

He nods. _Obviously._

She will phrase this in encyclopaedic terms, to save both of them from embarrassment.

"He doesn't love you, not like a – a lover, I suppose you would say. His attachment to you is fraternal, a brotherly affection, a different love. Non-romantic. So his grieving process, while it is painful, very painful… Well, he's recovering sooner than I am."

There. He can figure out the rest. She stands up, pushes her stool back, turns away to the other counter. Through her blurred vision she locates the folders she's finished and picks them up, to arrange them into a neat stack. Her fingers fumble with the papers: she hears something rip, a staple popping free. _No. _She lays the folders down as gently as she can, treating them as rare manuscripts, precious artefacts. Love letters.

_Don't be an idiot._ _Oh, why isn't he saying anything? Anything at all. Anything would be better than silence, indifference. I had thought… But clearly not._

She's long accepted that he does not love her, that either he cannot or will not do so, not in the same manner that she finally recognized as hers, when he had jumped from the roof of the hospital. The fairy tale manner, the true love notion: that was – is – her love for him.

Sentiment on steroids.

_How silly of you, to have loved someone who was dead. And now that he's alive, your love for him is just as futile. Stupidity in action. Crippling you, rendering you an object of his fickle and cruel affection, his non-affection._

_SHUT IT!_

"How long?"

Irene hears the deep-voiced question through a haze of misery. She takes another long breath, preparing herself for defence. _He can only say so many unkind things to me. I'll turn them away, walk away._

"How long what?" she asks. Tremulous.

"How long have you loved me?"

Irene cannot understand the quality of his tone, what it signifies. She flattens the papers with cold hands. "Ever since you jumped, I think. I realized it then. Sherlock, listen, you don't have to…"

She turns around, looks at his blurry figure, still seated. A memory darts past like a butterfly, obscuring her thoughts for a moment: _a man-sized blur, crouching at her feet. Unlocking the cuff. The darkened basement._

"You don't have to do anything," she says, forcing the words out. "I mean, look, just forget I said anything. I'll be fine in a few more weeks. Back to normal."

"You mean, you won't be _grieving_ any longer."

What is that in his voice? Derision? Incomprehension?

"Yes."

The mist clears from her eyes and the morgue appears with clarity. Irene sees Sherlock exactly as he is: looking up at her, his elbows propped on the lab counter, his fingers to his lips. A deathly feeling of horror and fear rises in her gut, spills into her heart: horror at her daring, fear at his oncoming reaction.

She knows she won't be able to bear his rejection, not now.

_Stay. _

_Leave. _

_Stay. Leave. _

_Stay._

_Run._

Carefully, she wraps up her partially-eaten muffin, puts it away in the little greasy bag. She gathers up her purse, slings it over her shoulder. Clutches it to her side. Spins round and picks up the three cold case files she's finished, places them and her notes on the counter in front of him.

"Just…" she tries, not looking at him.

She doesn't know what to say. She leaves the word hanging there, lonely and confused.

From the corner of her eye she sees him nod. As if he knows what she's going to say. For some reason this gives her the courage to continue.

"Think about it," she says in a rush. "And you don't need to buy Molly or Greg anything, I included your name in the card." _I knew you'd forget._

He stirs, moving as though he's enveloped in thick glue. One hand swims towards the folders on the counter, halts in mid-air. "What did you get?" he says, slowly.

Irene says, "Gift cards. I'll see you tonight. Eight o'clock."

And she runs away from him. She's walking out the doors, carrying her purse over her shoulder, her bag in one hand, poised as always, so calm, but she knows she's really running away. He knows she's really running away.

_Coward._

_You coward._


	13. Moon

**Moon**

The party, held in an upper room of the police station, passes in a blur: Irene hands off the gift cards to an astonished and deprecating Greg, amazed as always at the transformation wrought on him by Molly's presence. (And Sherlock's return, as well.) He practically shines with life and vigour.

Molly dances around the room, graceful, vivacious, completely unselfconscious. Irene keeps her eyes fixed on them, these two bright constellations.

She can't bear to look around for Sherlock.

John and Mary arrive late, a custom for them, and she watches as Mary charms everyone around her. Queen of England: almost kissing her hands, these men, those ladies. It's no wonder John fell for her.

Eventually Irene musters up enough composure to venture into the swaths of people, and finds herself having fun. She's always liked parties.

"I restore old books," Brian Jackson (_what a dull name_) is telling her. Shorter, with pale, swept-back hair and innocuous brown eyes. "Rare editions, that sort of thing. You might be interested in procuring my… services for your bookstore."

_Oh, might I?_

Irene leans against the back of a chair, holding her glass in gentle fingers, smiling sideways at him. She's wearing a favourite dress, black sequined silk that cuts perfectly above her knees and dips ever so graciously at the neck. It's long-sleeved, and for that she's grateful. It hides the healing scar on her arm.

"Let me have your card," she says, sipping from her drink. _Sprite. No spirits for me tonight. That was almost a pun._ "What was the name of your business again?"

He slips out his wallet, withdraws his card, presents it face up. Holds it extended on his palm. "Brian's Restorations. We've just opened."

Irene takes the card from him. It's quite new: fresh-cut edges, solid ink. "I see. And what kind of rare editions have you restored?"

"Oh, oh," he hedges, "well, we might have done something by Joyce – or C. S. Lewis. Churchill. Katy Perry?" His eyes are widening until they resemble a toy doll's. He's run out of classical-sounding names; she has no idea where he pulled the pop singer from.

_Liar, liar, pants on fire… No, that's too old. Fireworks?_

"Okay," Irene says, straightening. _This is one of Molly's or Greg's friends, so go easy on him. _"I'll think about it. But you might want to check your ledger. I'm fairly certain there's no rare editions of anything by Katy Perry, unless they're… CD liners." _Don't laugh._

Was the razor smile too much? Oh dear, he's frightened.

"Sure, sure, thanks," Brian grins, already sidling away. He whips around a couple of ladies in stilettos and is gone into the crowd. _Flee the madwoman!_

Irene feels a twinge of pity. She really hadn't meant to frighten him off. Well, that's how it happens sometimes. You tell a guy exactly why you think and they scurry away like bunnies. Or rats. Make that dogs.

Hounds.

_Speaking of precise elocution, where's Sherlock? No, don't peer around the room like a leering zombie. Go find someone else to make friends with; you've chased everyone off. (Poor Brian.) Ah, there's a woman. Thank God._

She moves towards the plunging back of a purple dress, careful to look both nonthreatening and appealing. (This consists of holding one's drink just above the stomach _– look, no weapons! And I haven't yet spilled, unlike that drunk person over there with burgundy all down their front –_ while weaving one's way slowly and skilfully through the crowd, one's eyes aware and yet calm.)

The woman turns, up-drawn black hair gleaming: it's Sally Donovan. Their eyes meet.

Irene forgets to look either nonthreatening or appealing. She's certain her anger is written across her face. Maybe her eyes have bugged out: shock and anger. Distaste so strong she can feel it in her lungs. She hasn't forgotten the last time she saw Donovan. Emotion fills her head like wind does a ship's sails: she could shout curses, if she wanted. Self-control drifting away.

_Sherlock winds his scarf around his neck, steady fingers. Puts on his coat, the collar already flipped up. He looks from a motionless John to a speechless Irene. Mrs Hudson is frozen by Irene, her hands pressed to her face. _

_Footsteps coming up the stairs. The door opening._

_Lestrade, followed by Donovan._

_"…__I am arresting you on suspicion of…"_

_Donovan's confident dark eyes. Triumphant._

Irene accepts a bacon-wrapped sausage from a passing tray. Smiling bowing waiter. Spinning people around her. Crunch of bacon and smush of spicy sausage on the tongue.

Another tray passing. Little cups. She takes one.

Water, thank God. She swallows. No more Sprite.

Donovan's moved farther away, angled in the opposite direction. Standing by a tall mirror. She's very pretty. Hadn't ever noticed before. Perhaps it's the permanent scowl.

Lots of noise in here. Pounding music (_bass bass bass till your head explodes like putty, high shrill screaming in place of actual lyrics_), squeaking spindling voices of other people, chatter, hiss, smile, stomp of heels and boots and shoes. Wonder how long I have to stay here. Can't quite think. Very warm. Where's Molly?

Ah. She's talking to Greg in an alcove, brown curls (_that's new_) falling over her shoulders, falling over a light green shimmery gown. Looking up at him. Greg leaning down. One hand on the wall by her shoulder. _They're not going to last the whole party either. When are they going to announce their engagement?_

John? Mary?

Oh. They're on the balcony. Two dark silhouettes, the same height as each other. Facing each other, blotted against a sunset. They look like a postcard of England: the land of romance! Fall in love under the London Eye! Sail the River Thames in a little pink boat dotted in red hearts!

That would be Sherlock's _nightmare_.

Pounding music.

_Alright, I have __got__ to take a breather. _

* * *

She's outside in one of the hallways, cool building air rushing over her bare shoulders, cascading across her skin. Small clasp purse tucked under her arm: keys, wallet, brand-new phone jingling inside. Policemen pass her, one touching a finger to the brim of his black hat. The others are walking too quickly to greet her. She brushes back wisps of hair from her face. Her forehead's hot.

There's a bench against the wall. Irene sits down, slips a finger between her heel and the back of her shoe, rubbing to relieve pressure. Perhaps she should have brought a different pair, but the old ones are in the shop, and the red insteps of the other pair would have been too much.

"You here for the party?"

She looks up. A man of average height, dressed casually, probably a few years younger than her. Nice eyes, flattened dark hair (has he been wearing a helmet?), crooked sweet smile. _Well_. "Yes. Lestrade's and Molly's."

_Was that too much information?_

_(No, you're being paranoid.)_

"Good. If you could direct me…? I seem to have lost my way." He flutters a wiry hand in apology; Irene stands, leaning against the wall to spare her feet, leaving her purse on the bench.

"That way." She points, looks back at him. "Turn down the nearest left-hand hallway and then go into the door on your right. You'll hear it before you get inside. They've got some sort of rap playing."

He smiles, nods, thanks her. So polite. Then offers her his hand. "I'm Richard. Richard Graffy."

"Irene Adler," she says, surprised at the sudden introduction, but covering it with a close-lipped smile. Takes his hand: a strong grasp, sweaty palm. Hmm. _Perhaps he ran up the stairs, thinking he was late._ "Do you know Lestrade, or Molly?"

"M-Molly," he says. A small stutter. She probably wouldn't have noticed it, except he's still got hold of her hand and she'd looked directly into his face just as his lips trembled. He lets go; she moves back, just slightly.

Sherlock would have said: _He's lying. Why is he lying? Is it important? Think._

She wants to see what happens, what's going on. "How did you meet?" she says, watching his pupils contract, watching his lips curve, wondering if she can trap him. _Don't you dare lie to me.__I've had enough of that for a lifetime._

"At her work," he says. A prepared sentence. It would have been difficult to ascertain if it was the truth or not, unless she knew exactly where Molly works, what she works on, who she works with. And she does.

"Oh, so she's probably told you about her latest paper? I can't quite remember the subject…"

Richard Graffy's not quite smiling. "Maybe, maybe not. We haven't spoken for a while, but she invited me tonight, so I…" He's looking around. "I should probably…"

As he turns away, two policemen hurry past with a dishevelled, cursing woman in handcuffs, and Irene looks at them, momentarily distracted.

Richard Graffy makes a sudden motion just below her range of vision, directed at the bench. She jerks back and sits down on the wooden slats, hard, just as he bends in half. Is he having a convulsion? A seizure?

All of his subterfuge is forgotten. She leans towards him, trying to see what has happened, both hands reaching to support him. But not touching, not yet. There's no blood. He's not crying out in pain. Maybe –

"Are you alright?" Her voice so high.

He's sitting on the tiles, looking dazed. Legs extended.

"Must have tripped," he mumbles. "I think one of the coppers bumped me. I'm okay."

He's getting up slowly, wincing theatrically, when she sees a flash of shiny black in his pocket. Shiny bright material. Sequins. She glances at the empty bench. _Great._

Irene lunges forward, crouching on high heels, and takes her purse back.

Graffy stares at her, frozen.

She glares up at him.

"Richard Graffy," she says, rising to her feet, so tall in her heels (_no matter that small blister_), "I believe you are a common pickpocket."

An officer is already bearing down upon them, her gait alert. Irene sighs, moves to block Graffy's other avenue of escape, standing in the centre of the hallway with her purse clasped tightly in both hands. Graffy swallows painfully before her. His head bobbing like a duck, looking back, looking forward. Raising his hands to placate her. Beginning to babble explanations.

She ignores his excuses, shaking her head.

What a night.

_And where is Sherlock?_

_My one moment of unequivocal triumph and he's nowhere to be found._

She smiles over Graffy's shoulder at the police officer. "This is Richard Graffy, Officer. He just tried to steal my purse."

"Irene?" says another voice. Male. Pitched higher than normal. _John._ "Is something wrong?"

She looks behind her, one arm falling, sees Graffy whip past in the corner of her eye.

He's heading straight for John and Mary: probably thinks he can barrel over the smaller man or woman and make his way to freedom. Oh, he's really going to regret this.

John neatly trips him, _so swift_, tosses him gracefully, economically against the wall. Three short movements, and the taller man now as helpless as a cloth dummy. John's got his arm to Graffy's throat. His blond hair isn't even mussed.

Behind him, Mary crosses her arms, licks her lips, her eyebrows rising in appreciation. Her eyes find Irene's after they've travelled down John's broad shoulders. They say:

_Oh, aren't I the lucky one? Just look at that._

Irene can't help but smile back. Laughter caught like falling gold in her throat. Yes, Mary, you are lucky. You and Molly. All the lucky girls. Good.

But what am I?

_Where are you, Sherlock? _

_How do I fix this? _

_Should I even try?_

* * *

At last the party is finished: Graffy handcuffed and taken away. Blushing Molly and grinning Lestrade on the little black stage, announcing to the sound of whistles and claaapping claaapping.

Ten minutes later, Irene is out on the street, raising her arm for a cab.

A shrill whistle. So loud. Her ear falls deaf, stopped up as with water. She pivots on the cold pavement, hugging her arms to her sides, her purse clamped cautiously under her armpit. She's still mad about Graffy.

"Do you _mind_–"

"None of them were stopping," says Sherlock Holmes.

His coat collar's flipped up by his ears. Blue scarf tucked into the front, the pressed whiteness of his shirt barely visible. He nods over her shoulder, and she glances back to see a cab pulling up to the pavement.

"So you came to the party after all," she says. Heat running up her back. _Oh, you sound like a_ _schoolgirl: 'You did come! Just like I asked! How wonderful, how kind of you.'_ She sighs, rubs her cold hand on the softness of her dress, and opens the cab door.

He climbs in after her, his coat rustling.

"221B Baker Street," he tells the driver. Looks at Irene her with light blue eyes. _Chameleon eyes._ "I did. Someone had to make sure the police were doing their jobs." A supercilious lightning smile.

"I doubt you were in there for more than a half hour," she says.

"Ten minutes, at most," he says frankly, and startles her into a laugh. He's no longer upset; she can tell by his swift responses.

Relaxing, Irene eases off her shoes, lets them settle in the floor of the cab. "That's not surprising. I suppose the whole thing was rather boring for you, since you already knew what was going to happen. I don't think everyone there had it figured out."

Sherlock unbuttons the first few buttons of his coat, fingers flicking in and out. His eyes on the seat back in front of him.

"It wasn't," he says.

She can't remember _exactly_ what she just said, but she's fairly certain there wasn't a question in there. "What? What do you mean?"

"It wasn't boring," he says again. He lays his hands on his thighs, long white fingers perfectly straight. There's a small scab running along the side of his index finger. "I'm glad that I came."

The back of her neck tingles. _Signal of strong emotion. Premonition._

No idea what to say.

Not much longer to the flat: she recognizes the street that's just before theirs. Not enough time to ask him what he thinks, what he thought about what she'd told him. A mangled tangle of thoughts and feelings crawling together in her brain. Like overgrown spiders.

She remembers he's just spoken. "That's good. I'm glad."

Oh, she wants to be out of this cab. No, in it, by him. Close.

Away.

_Stop it. You're not a child. Pick a side._

_I already have._

"Are you still thinking? About what I said?" The words fall out before she can force them back. Very well; at least she doesn't have to wonder, wonder, wonder. At least asking him may bring an answer. Any answer.

No, just one.

Please.

Those long fingers pick themselves up and clasp together before his lips. He turns his head, ever so slightly, and looks at her. A sideways look: contemplative, examining.

"I am," he says.

The cab jerks to a slamming halt, the driver muttering their arrival. Irene grips the back of the seat, realizes she's staring at Sherlock. She opens the door and gets out on their street.

221B gleams from the dark-green door.

The cab drives off.

Sherlock's waiting on the pavement beside her.

She glances skyward, and then they're both looking up at the moon. It's an eye in the sky, a single smoothed honeycomb, the circle of a lamp-lit magnifying glass.

Irene thinks about the last time she saw a full moon. She can't remember. _Before the basement. Before the bus. Before I left. When?_

She thinks about the last time Sherlock saw a full moon.

He could have been anywhere: Paris, Budapest, Munich. Zion, Mombasa, Sicily. Garnering new scars, new information, new sly furtive furious captives to pack off to Mycroft or to rundown jails. Some dead by his hand, self-defence, knives, guns. Grief forming wrinkles around his mouth, changing the shape of his eyes. Moriarty taunting him even in death. Who said he didn't win?

She turns to him, pain in her throat. "Sherlock."

"I know." His deep voice is almost dreamy, his head tilted back. Stars revolving above him. "You're afraid you've hurt me by telling me. That you love me."

"Haven't I?"

"No. Now hush. I want to look at this, the moon, all of the stars above London. I haven't seen them for a while. Not from here."

_Such an understatement: a while._

_You said: No._

He takes her hand, and she looks up at the white sparks, the starry night. Everything turning above the twin coronas of their heads. The warmth of his hand against her own, rough calluses in his palm. His coat sleeve sliding against her arm. Looking up.

The moon.


	14. Window

**Window**

That night she falls asleep without trouble, lying there looking up at the ceiling, one loose arm thrown above her head. Pattern of streetlights and moon on the ceiling: fragmented turning shadows. She tells herself a story. Growing sleepy.

_Once upon a time there was a girl who fell in love with a detective. Not a police detective._

_His best friend was named John Watson._

_They lived in a little ramshackle house at the edge of London. Rosebushes grew untamed in their tiny front yard. On the red door it said 221B. One 2 was for John, the other for Irene. The 1 for Sherlock, because he wasn't the same as them. (Only one consulting detective.) The B for Mrs Beatrice Hudson, who lived upstairs and tended house._

The shadows become a house, then four distinct people, moving about inside of it. Drinking tea, mopping up spills, playing violin, singing, writing books, reading newspapers, looking out of the windows.

She is looking out of the left window into the rose garden. Flowers as big as her open hands.

A rose lawn, a rose garden, a rose porch. Prickly vines climbing up the walls, spreading big red petals into flowers. Fragrance like a country night-time. She opens the window with a shove. Miniscule black birds are fluttering about on the roses.

One opens his yellow porcelain beak and looks at her with his red eye:

_John! No god no please no he's dead I did it I killed him it was all my fault_

It's shouting at her: a megaphone of a mouth. Sherlock's disembodied voice. Loud! She bats her hand at it, trying to get it away. _You're not Sherlock!_

The window springs down with a crashing slam and she wakes up.

She's sitting up in her bed, in the flat, at night, her sheets and blankets thrown around her in a purple-and-white whirlwind, her hands fumbling for the beaded string on her lamp. Thumping noises coming from downstairs, from the kitchen. Forget the light. Get your gown.

* * *

Irene runs down the creaking stairs, trying to close her dressing gown with one hand. She reaches the landing and stops, unsure whether to go forward or back, her heart pounding in her ears. So that she can hardly hear a thing.

The boys weren't in their rooms when she'd passed: both bedroom doors standing open into flat darkness.

_Why didn't I get the gun from John's nightstand! _

"Irene?"

_Oh, thank God. _She turns the corner into the kitchen, her sweaty feet making marks on the tiles.

Sherlock's sitting slumped in one of the hard kitchen chairs, his elbow propped on the table, his hand shoved into his hair. Wearing his red dressing gown thrown over his old blue-striped pyjamas. Looking down at the table, at nothing.

"Sorry to wake you," John says. He's got his back to her; he's running water at the sink. Wearing a beige sweater over his ragged sweatpants.

She comes farther into the kitchen. "No, it's fine. I thought – never mind. _Oh my_."

Sherlock raises his head, ever so slightly, to look at her. There is wet blood smeared on his temple. Irene takes several very quick steps and is at his side, her hand on his warm silken shoulder, leaning down to look at the wound. No, it's just a bit of blood. No cut there.

He opens his left hand, clenched on the table, and she sees the gash in the palm. A half-inch wide. But mild.

"Just glass," Sherlock says, before she can ask how, and these must have been his first words since he's woken up, the first he's spoken in a while. Slurred, gravelly. His leopard voice even lower than usual. Has he been asleep?

John turns around from the sink, holding a damp rag. "'S'alright, Irene. He – we – it's just broken science equipment."

He gestures to the counter. For the first time Irene sees the scattered glass fragments: the remains of a test tube. Scarlet glimmering around the edges of one long shard. There's a pot of clear liquid simmering on the stove: it smells of metal. Of iron. Another experiment.

"You dropped it?" she says. It's so unlike him, so unlikely.

"No," he says. He lowers his hand from his head, leans back in his chair. "I… put my hand down on top of it."

That doesn't make sense. He crushed it under his palm?

John sits down in the chair next to him, takes the injured hand, and begins to dab at it. He's set a bottle of antiseptic on the table, along with a few cotton balls, plasters, a new tube of antibiotic cream.

Irene leans against the edge of the table. For a moment none of them say anything, all holding in words: Sherlock hiding his pain and irritation at their comforting, doctoring; John trying not to ask questions, only humming tunelessly as he must hum for all his patients; Irene pressing her worries into the back of her mind and trying to hold them there, like a child forcing an overflowing closet closed.

She'd heard the yelling. Sherlock's yelling. Screaming. About John. It hadn't been part of her dream.

At last John pronounces, "Okay, we'll just bandage it now," and the silence breaks around them. Irene places her palms flat on the table and pulls herself up to sit on the edge. Her feet dangle above the floor.

John presses a plaster around the cut, sealing it over with plastic, sealing in antibiotics. Fixing everything with just a few touches of his hands. To be a doctor: what would that be like? He pushes all the blood-stained gauze and cotton to the side of the table with the flat of his hand, and gets up to throw them away.

Sherlock looks briefly up at him as he passes: silent communication.

Then he looks away. Flexes the fingers of his injured hand, watching the bandage move in a ripple of flesh-coloured elastic.

"I've had worse," he says. A complex half-smile.

John, returning, crosses his arms, looks to Irene. Both wondering if they should touch this statement or let it pass. But he has never spoken about the – the time in between before.

_Has he to you? _She tilts her head at John.

He frowns, just a crease of skin between his eyes. _No._

"First I went to Switzerland," Sherlock says, softly.

The syllables are so quiet. He draws a long breath through his teeth.

They wait.

"I sent four men to jail. Killed a fifth when he pulled a gun on me."

A pause, drawn-out.

"Then I went to New York. One man, one woman. Both deadly. Both… dead. The woman gave me this, and another scar across my shoulder. She was an expert knife-fighter."

He swipes a finger over the underside of his chin, across that pink half-inch line.

John sits down.

Sherlock says, "Mycroft had been dealing with the organization in London; he got rid of your two new lodgers. Quietly. He made sure of that."

Irene remembers how one day she'd come home and seen Mrs Turner at the curb, waving goodbye to a rushing-away cab, bewilderment in her wrinkled cheeks.

"I left New York and went to Mexico," Sherlock says. "A single operative there, an important one. An old woman, but ruthless, wily. I brought her down."

The words slow to come. "She was… the head of a large smuggling operation; they sent guns and explosives and drugs across the ocean."

He slides his finger against his lip, breathes in.

"By then it had been a year since I'd left. She – the old woman – was the one who told me about Moran. Rumors she'd heard."

_Red hair backlit from the refrigerator light, one hand on the door –_

The silence, Sherlock's pointed silence, is the thing that alerts her, that breaks the memory away before it can really start.

"Moran was the hardest to find," he says. He's looking up at her, his jewel-green eyes slits, his bandaged hand outstretched on the table.

She nods. Makes sense.

"I tracked him for the remainder of the second year. It was slow work. He kept sending lackeys to slow me down, to try to kill me. I sent some to Mycroft, others to jail, some died. By then I was – very tired."

He sighs, runs a hand over his face, across his mouth. Curls his fingers against his chin. Not looking at them anymore.

"I had done so much, waited so long. I. I missed you. Both of you."

Flat tone. He means it, can't say it with any emotion or he'll break. Out of the corner of her eye she sees John's mouth twitch. Sheer pain.

"Then I got very close," and he speaks faster. Voice running over the words. "I found where Moran had been hiding: in London. Mycroft had missed him. I was furious. He had been so close to both of you. If he had lost his temper, if he had snatched one of you as bait for me – but he hadn't. I thought… we'd been lucky. I went to Italy, following him."

He clears his throat in a series of dry clicks, brushes a short curl off his brow.

Irene realizes he's near the end of his remembrances, that soon he'll reach her part in this horrible tale. Her fingers have tightened so fiercely on the edges of the table that she can't feel their tips.

"Then I lost him again. But I found a snarl of operatives in Sicily. Sex traffickers. I took them down." A flicker over his face: disgust. "Then I returned to London, looking for Moran. I knew he was close by. He wanted to taunt me by… staying close to you."

"How long were you here?"

It's John's question, faint but clear.

"Two months," Sherlock says. "I never came into this area." He hitches a breath. "Except once."

John blinks. "When?"

"September nineteenth. Three-twenty in the morning. A Tuesday night. I stood on the opposite side of the street and watched the flat. I didn't see you. I didn't think I was going to."

He's looking at John, but now his piercing gaze turns to Irene. "I saw you. In the left window. You were reading a book. Pacing."

"Oh," she says. What can she say? "I… sometimes I stayed up and read." She can't remember that night at all. He had been standing there, so close, invisible.

Just a few meters away.

"I see." Sherlock drops his eyes. Tugs gently at the plaster on his hand.

"Then I left London, just for a few days, to clear up some things in Libya. Mycroft had some problems he couldn't quite handle. By the time I came back –" his shoulders tighten, shift, a spasm, "– you'd already been taken."

She knows.

Sherlock says, "Mycroft gave me the information he had on your kidnapping." He's being deliberately vague. John still doesn't know about the videos.

There's a rushing in her ears: pure terror.

Irene can't hold her tongue, can't curb the fiery flow of words. "Yes, well, you both know the rest. Sherlock figured out where I was, he came and got me, we went back to Mycroft's and then we went home."

_You're being appallingly rude._

Warm pressure on her leg. She looks down through a sheen of water. Sherlock's right hand is cupped around her knee.

He's told them everything; can't she? Maybe it helped him. But it sounded so painful.

_Make it quick. Like ripping off a scab._

"Moran took me from the bus," she says, in a stream of expelled air.

Heat swarms up her back and over her face, wrapping around her cheekbones and forehead like a mask, edging fluidly under Sherlock's grasp.

John's eyes pin themselves on her; she knows, she can feel his look as a buzzing pressure. She can't look at him, either of them.

"I went with him because he had a gun. He knocked me out when we reached his car. I woke up in a dirty basement with my hand cuffed to the wall."

_Coarse blanket tossed around her, hand hanging taut against broken plaster, hair matted, mouth incredibly dry. The gromp gromp of angry boots. A man looking down at her through grey darkness. _

"There was a camera set up. Every night he would turn it on and leave. During the day he'd be upstairs. He brought me food in the mornings and afternoons. Bread, fruit. Sometimes bagels. He told me the camera was streaming everything live, so I figured Mycroft would find it on the web eventually. I told the camera what I knew about the house, where I was, who exactly Moran was."

Both men are so still, light and dark hair, short and tall, both so still. She is looking between them, at the line of cupboards.

"I did try to escape. Three times. He – well, he caught me. But that was how I found out about the house. I didn't know where we were. It was dark, the night I made it upstairs. But I figured we were somewhere in the country. The pipes dripped, and the water smelled like pine. I forgot to tell Mycroft that, I think."

She moistens her lips. "Well, eventually Moran decided it had been long enough. He wanted Sherlock. I thought Sherlock was dead, and I was pretty sure he wasn't going to show." A strangled hiss of a laugh; she doesn't know why. _Stop it._

"Moran ran out of patience the last night and turned the camera on early. He told me he was going to kill me. Then he changed his mind" – how to get the words out fast enough - "and said he'd shoot me in the kneecap. He didn't, though."

John's hands are clasped so tightly together that his fingers are white and yellow where they're joined. She can feel Sherlock's hand trembling, just barely, on her knee. His touch extremely light. As if he's afraid of hurting her.

Irene says, almost whispering, "Sherlock showed up after that. I don't really remember the rest in great detail. After we left the house we went to a hotel for a day, tried to recuperate. Then to Mycroft's. You know the rest."

_Please tell me that's enough. I've said enough, haven't I? _

_You're not speaking, please speak, John, please – _

_Breathe._

"Okay," John murmurs.

His voice sounds muffled, grainy, after hearing her own words echo so loudly in her head, feeling the vibrations of her story run along the roof of her mouth and over her lips. After Sherlock's hollow drone.

John's voice is tender, human, full of understanding. "Okay."

He reaches out and puts his capable soldier's hand on Sherlock's shoulder, squeezes it. Grips Irene's shoulder with his other hand. She leans into his firm touch. Inhales. Relief.

Sherlock, very tentatively, pats her knee.

Shakily, unsure, Irene puts her damp hand over his. He doesn't let go, doesn't pull away.

The three of them sit in the kitchen of 221B.


	15. Hedge

**Hedge**

_Four days later._

She's walking in the rain along a bare country lane, her umbrella held above her, the wind threatening disaster as it swoops around her, carrying whipping water in its harsh folds. Ahead of her, two men walk side-by-side, their heads down, hurrying towards the red-and-yellow buildings shining at the end of the cobblestones.

Behind her walks another man, hatless, coatless. Without an umbrella or shoes. Without a shirt.

_Without a mind?_

_(Don't be silly. He's just a little… not there.)_

The madman of Dennis Heath.

Stick-straight, eyes a-bulge, hair plastered to his skull.

The two men ahead of her disappear into a pub.

Irene turns off the lane into a damp hay-strewn path, lined with rough hedges on both sides. Walks on down the path. Tucks her waving hair into a ponytail, closes her umbrella, takes off her rain-slicked coat. Folds up these articles and tosses them over the hedges into the ragged field beyond. She'll be back for them. She did pay nine quid for that dratted umbrella.

She can hear the madman's weary stamping footsteps behind her, louder, louder, loudest.

Water runs down her face, into the collar of her sweater. She rubs her scratchy sleeve across her face. Shaking off the cold as best she can.

Passing under a low-hanging tree, she breaks into a run. Water-soaked hay spattering under her feet. Lungs pumping, in and out, in and out. In and in.

The madman's footsteps growing, quickening.

Careful to look straight ahead, she sprints the last few meters down the path. _There. Make sure he doesn't see you. Quick!_

A tiny space between two hedges, hardly big enough, but she can make it. She ducks her head and slips inside, her hands up to protect her face. Takes a breath, shoves sideways, and then she's through, standing inside a rainy maze in the middle of Dennis Heath, England.

"Is he still following you?" a deep voice hisses at the level of her knees.

Irene rakes brambles out of her hair, brushes water and a dead leaf off her nose, before she turns to acknowledge Sherlock Holmes. He and John Watson are crouched at the base of the inner hedges, completely invisible to passer-by, both soaked to the skin. John's grinning; Sherlock's scowling. All's as usual.

"Yes, and no thanks to you," she hisses back, crouching down beside John. "I had to walk almost a mile before he finally started following me. I thought he'd never show up. _Why_ did we pick this stupid maze for a rendezvous again?"

"We already went over this," Sherlock growls, flapping a hand in disgust at her meagre intellect.

"It's easily defensible," John says. He reaches up to pull her down a little more. "Sorry, but your hair's pretty distinct against all this green."

Cold hand still on the crown of her head, he pauses, his own head cocked, as Irene tries to wring water out of the elbows of her sweater. "Listen. Hear that? Remember the plan, you two."

Everyone goes silent, trying not to breathe too loudly. Sherlock's wearing an intense expression, murky greenish eyes darting back and forth over the impenetrable hedge. Rain drips steadily against the back of Irene's neck and into her sweater, wending its joyous freezing way down her warm nape and between her shoulders. _This is horrible._

_Oh, stop whining, you wanted to come._

Stumpy sounds of an unsteady walking pace, bouncy, off-kilter. Thump-_spat,_ thump-_spat,_ thump -_spat_. Their madman has a bad knee.

Thump-_spat. _Thump-_spat._ Thump-_spoot._

He's stopped.

Nothing but the lonely groaning sound of wind and rain.

"Me first," John breathes, "then Sherlock, then Irene. Don't break anything: him or you. _Now_."

He flings himself out through the hedge opening; Sherlock lunges after him – and immediately gets stuck in the jagged gap, his shoulders jammed, his long arms flailing as he tries to propel himself through.

Stricken, and yet trying not to laugh, smothering her mouth with the crook of her arm, Irene leaps up, and shoves as hard as she can at Sherlock's nearest shoulder.

Perhaps a little too hard.

For as Sherlock falls through the gap, his eyes rolling back to observe her, his brown boot catches on the back of her shoe. She feels herself falling, inexorable, incapable of stopping. Her fingers trail through an emptiness of loose foliage.

Blackness for an instant.

Then she opens her eyes, stunned.

She's sprawled against Sherlock's chest, his endless legs. His foot crushing hers underneath, into the prickly hay. His head lolled back with the force of their impact, his black curls already going brown with mud.

Irene's hand is clamped on his bicep in a death-grip. She can feel her sweater riding up her back, the inch-wide line of exposed skin already numb from the cold rain. Sherlock's steely arm is wrapped around her shoulders, one finger flattened against the base of her skull, in what she thinks was an attempt to keep her from falling. No, maybe to protect her as she fell.

_Oh, God._

Muffled laughter from above her. _John_.

Irene lets go of Sherlock's arm and extricates herself so quickly from his grip, she sees stars when she stands. She stumbles about, trying to find her balance. Ends up leaning against the nearest hedge, blinking hard to reorient herself.

_(The last time something like this happened I was __six__. Idiot is too kind of a word. No, it wasn't __me__, it was his blasted __feet__. Why are they so large? So massive! So cumbersome! Aggh.)_

John's got one firm hand on the madman's passive shoulder and the other buried in the wet hedge to hold himself up, he's laughing so hard. Sherlock reels to his own feet, rubbing the back of his head, his alabaster complexion darkening along his cheekbones.

Irene finds her lips trembling.

_Embarrassment or annoyance? Tears or speech?_

"Didn't I say to _follow the plan?"_ John chokes out. For a moment he seems like he might remain coherent, but then he falls into another spasm of laughter and bends over, hacking.

Sherlock takes hold of the madman's other shoulder and glares at John. He's white-lipped.

At a loss, amazed at her sudden bad temper, Irene says, "I'll go get my things. I left them… down there…"

She brushes sticky-brown hay off her shoulder, her wrist, and goes down the path. Every stumpy footstep jars her ankle; she'd twisted it when she'd fallen, but she has no desire to show this weakness to either man right now, and so she walks as normal, gritting her teeth. John can take a look at it later.

When he's done being amused.

* * *

By the time she reaches her sodden things, she's figured out why she's so angry. The furious blaze peters out into a dim, soggy sadness. It settles under her breastbone, a useless organ, pulsing in time with her heart.

Her ankle doesn't hurt anymore.

She goes into the gap between the hedges, retrieves her umbrella and rain slicker, slings the latter on over her sweater. The inside's moderately dry. Better than her mud-laden sweater, anyway.

_You think he'll never reciprocate your… affection. _

_(Now even the inside of my head is beginning to sound like emotionally-stunted-Sherlock-Holmes. Say the actual word.) _

_Sherlock doesn't love you. _

_Life is really crappy, isn't it? _

Irene goes out into the path, wooden umbrella handle slung over her arm. Hood tucked up over her grimy hair. In the distance, framed by green walls, Sherlock's questioning the madman, asking him everything he knows about the horse, the two cats, and the woman that vanished while walking in the woods.

John's standing next to him, his hands in his pockets. He looks down the path at her and smiles. Beckons with a little nod.

She almost doesn't walk towards him. Them. It would be easier to turn, to go into town, to her bright room in the inn, where it's warm and dry and safe, where she can order hot soup and bread, where there's no Sherlock, his eyes avoiding hers. Or maybe it's the laughter she's afraid of, and not him.

_You chose this, but you could still walk away. _

_(I did choose this.) _

_He hasn't laughed at you. Yet. _

_(I know him. He won't.) _

_Do you? Won't he?_

She walks towards them, the three black figures outlined in green wetness. An equal green wetness closing around her heart.


	16. Disguise

**Disguise**

Later, when Sherlock is pacing up and down before a corkboard (_borrowed, not stolen, look up the word,_ he says, although they all know he's not going to give it back to the innkeeper any time soon) that's riddled with photos, papers, names, when Irene is sitting on the railing of the balcony, looking down at the wet stones below, John opens the balcony door behind her.

He closes it, comes to stand next to her, his hands falling automatically to the smooth metal railing.

"Are you alright?" he asks, and holds up his hand, classic soldier's posture, before she can lie. "Don't say you are, because I can tell you're not. Is it about Moran? Or something else? Would you mind telling me about it?"

Irene doesn't know. It would be so easy to say it's Moran. But it's not. And this is John, this is _John_; he knows already, if she's right about his practiced intuition, and she doesn't want to lie to him.

She slips off the railing, glancing through the glass panes of the door. Sherlock's still pacing, quite oblivious, staring at his board, hands dancing in the air, purple sleeves rolled up tight on his forearms. His watch face flashes in the light: Morse code.

_Dot, dot. [Space of seven units.] Dot, dot, dot._

"Have you ever loved someone who doesn't – love you in return?" she says, her eyes on Sherlock.

_Impossible to phrase with elegance. Maybe that's how truth sounds, when it leaves your lips. Ugly, because it's so real, so raw._

John nods. "Yes." His answer trailing away into fog. "Yeah, of course. You're talking about romantic love, right?"

"Yes," Irene says, and laughs in startled awe, at how far she's fallen for him. "That's my problem right now. I mean, I think it is. I don't know for certain, because I don't know what he thinks. I never know with him. Sherlock, I mean."

John shakes his head, his mouth wry; he hadn't needed the name, judging from his lack of surprise.

"No, people don't, do they?" He settles his gloveless hands in the pockets of his green jacket and turns to look at Sherlock. Slumps against the railing, relaxed. "He's hard to figure out. Especially… with that sort of thing."

For a minute they watch the consulting detective work. Both exhaling airy clouds into the cold, old country night. A faint rumbling over their heads, the storm moving away, trailing across the dark emptiness. Pale tendrils, curling up and away.

"It's silly," she says. "I never thought, when I moved in, that it would end up like this. Everything. Moriarty," (strange how that name still chills her breath in her throat) "Sherlock's – absence. And Moran. Or that we'd still be with Sherlock, solving cases."

"Me neither," John says. His eyes are still fixed on Sherlock's whirling figure. "I thought he was gone."

"Yes." _For most of the time._

"I thought about punching him, when he showed up. I really did. I was _so close_ to jamming his teeth down his – Yeah, I really was. I couldn't believe it when he walked in."

Irene listens to John's choppy breathing. He laughs, just a little. Bitter laugh, tinged with regret, sorrow.

"Then I saw his skinny arms, and that weird face of his. It was all _skinny._ He was so thin. And he looked – so, so… Wretched."

He breathes in, looks at her with an eyebrow raised. _You stole that from Sherlock, that eyebrow look,_ she thinks_._ "I couldn't believe it. It was like he was a ghost or something. Come back to haunt me. _John? John? Boo!_ I was so sure he was dead."

Irene nods. She knows.

He laughs again, his eyes moving away, running a hand down the side of his face.

"Shows what I knew. Do you know what he told me, after he showed up? You'd left, so you didn't hear. But he said, he said, '_John, I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.' _And I was a little stunned, still, right, so I didn't know what to say. And then he said, '_But I did it for your own good._' Oh God, doesn't that just sound like him? I didn't even know what to say after that, I could only stare at him. Oh, God, he was always such a…"

John's laughing, really laughing now, grinning, his mouth open in great big chuckles.

Irene giggles, imagining John's gaping look after Sherlock had said that, imagining – but she can't imagine it, can't laugh, not really, it's all still so painful, and as she looks more carefully at John, she can see tiny tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, as laughter wrenches itself out of his body, twisting him, breaking him.

He closes his eyes, the tears leaking over his cheeks, shuddering, and she reaches out to him. John hugs her, hard, fingers curling up against her shoulders. Exhales into her collarbone, a wrenching breath.

They cling to each other, both so stupid, so grief-stricken for a man that's just next door.

Irene pats John's burning neck, thinking briefly of Mary, wishing she was here. Opens one wet eye, and sees Sherlock frozen before his corkboard. Hands lowered at his side. His watch no longer signalling Morse code.

He's looking through the glass door at them, at them embracing, at John.

Irene looks back at him, both eyes open now. Her gaze clear.

_Alright? _Sherlock mouths. Inclining his head at John. _Is he alright?_

_Yes, _Irene mouths back, silently, still patting.

"It's okay," she murmurs, John's sobs shivering through her. "It's okay. You're fine. You're fine."

Inside, she sees Sherlock sit down on the edge of the white bed, still looking out at them. His black coat tugged close around him, his collar flipped up against his jaw: comfort mechanisms. As though he's trapped in the room, and can't come out. Caged.

She thinks, just for one self-indulgent moment, that they're all caged. Every one of them.

What's a basement compared to a mind?

* * *

By the time John lifts his head from Irene's shoulder and starts apologizing, Sherlock has vanished into the hallway, presumably to find more evidence for the case. That's what he'd say if she asked him, she's certain, but she knows it wouldn't be true.

Irene waves all of John's stuttering away, pats him on the shoulder, and tells him, in the most motherly, anti-romantically way she can muster up, that he should go to bed. And maybe call Mary in the morning, just to talk. _You need someone to talk to._

"But who will you talk to?" is his direct response.

She flinches, then pretends she hasn't. "John… Well, I've talked to you. A little. And to – sort of to Sherlock, too."

"How did _that_ go?" He's back in doctor mode; he rolls his shoulders and gets his chin up, looking exactly into her eyes.

Irene smiles a little sadly. "About as well as you'd think. Actually, he didn't say anything _rude_, just sort of sat there. And watched me. He didn't do the finger-thing, thank goodness. I suppose that's as heart-warming as he gets."

John chokes back another giggle, shakes himself, and opens the door. "Yep, that's Sherlock. Well, yeah, I'm off to bed. Night, Irene. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

He sticks his head 'round the door. "Don't stay out there all night; you'll catch cold. Decreased functioning of the immune system, yeah?"

"Yeah, I won't, I promise. Night, John. Sleep well."

She hears the door close, and instantly the night becomes a lot closer. Darkness creeping up around the balcony, soft sad calls of owls, crickets. There's no one out; this town is dead by eleven. She fingers the phone in her pocket, sighs a little.

No one to call. Renee's watching the bookstore, as well advising her husband on how to put their two-year-old to bed, a petulant boy who only falls asleep after four hours of plaintive lullabies and back-rubbing. Amy's probably just starting her night shift at the hospital.

Mother (_Stepmother_) only calls on Christmas.

_Just a few more months, then, and I'll get to spend an interminable amount of time listening to suggestions for my life, personal, public, protracted. Marriage and money. Her tangible anger that I still won't come to her blasted Christmas party, so she can lambast me to her guests, poke fun at Dad's family in my hearing. As if I ever would._

_If only Dad were still around._

_It does no good to dwell on it. _

_I've got two other parties to go to: John's and Sherlock's, and Aunt Ellie's. Those will have to be enough._

A light warm breeze dances across her hair, and she turns her head to see the door opening, Sherlock's lithe hand flat on the pane. He pushes it open completely, steps through the gap. He's taken off his coat, is carrying it carelessly over one arm, a photograph in the same hand.

"Have you seen him before?" he demands, jutting the photo into her face.

Irene takes it from him before he pokes her in the eye. Grey-haired, spectacled, calm-eyed, the face of an elderly country doctor. "Yeah, isn't this Dr Gregory? We spoke to him yesterday; he's the one with two dogs and three cats and –"

"Yes, he is," Sherlock says, and takes another photo out of his pocket. "_Look._"

She squints at the bad image: it's the madman, framed by the hedge, beady-eyed, devil-may-care pose, arms stiff at his sides, shirtless (not in a good way). Practically foaming at the mouth, he's so – he's really got the act down – he's really _acting_ like a madman. All of the symptoms. As if he's read up about them, as if he's taken every diagnosis and jammed them together.

Irene takes the photo from him, holds it side-by-side with Dr Gregory's. The same tired jaw, the same arched eyebrows, the same mouths, although one is contorted, the other prim. "No _way_. You're joking."

"I never joke," Sherlock declares, "and yes, this so-called _madman _of Dennis Heath is none other than Dr Reginald Gregory, playacting as a lunatic. I thought so. A superior mind and an average one, in agreement. Good."

Irene raises both eyebrows; he flaps his hand at her, rolling his eyes. _Don't even start, _these motions mean.

"So I rang DI Hanson and told him to arrest the doctor. The supposed 'missing' woman is Dr Gregory's orphaned niece, who's pregnant. I wanted to be certain that it wasn't his child she's carrying, and after seeing him run around in the woods, babbling nonsense, I'm positive it's not. It must be Michael Howe; it was _his_ horse the good doctor stole. Payback for getting his niece pregnant."

"Surely she had a say in it," Irene protests, trying to remember who Michael Howe is. A gardener? He has blond hair, she remembers. Oh, he's the town florist. _Right_. "And if not, I'd be doing a lot more than pretending to be mad, if I were the doctor. Did she have a say?"

"Yes, yes, I presume so," Sherlock says, his fingers tapping against his chin. "Or she wouldn't be locked up in the forest cottage, along with five cats and one really angry horse." He grins. "The horse is probably in the shed, considering the size of that cottage."

Irene bites back a laugh. "Yes, well, one would hope so. Isn't it about – what, ten feet square?"

"Remember the five cats," Sherlock says, and to her great relief, a true smile curls across his mouth.

She laughs, feeling happier than she's felt in weeks. _Months, really._ Gold bubbles rising to the top of her head, fluttering there. "Right. Oh, that poor girl. Five cats! Why do you suppose he caught them all? He must really be insane."

"No, no, I feel I've definitely disproved that," Sherlock scolds, shaking his head at her, and takes back the photographs with a swipe of his hand. He tosses them onto the railing. "That's done, then. Another case gone. We'll need something to do tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. _Arggghh_…"

He's frowning, disheartened at the thought of case-less days spreading out into the horizon. Sighing, he leans against the balcony, his arm dropping to his side. Gazes up at the lingering strings of the storm, trailing away, mutinous. To the other side of England.

Irene shivers, suddenly aware of the cold, and takes the coat off his lax arm. "Give me that, please. Thank you."

Sherlock looks at her. "It's not that cold."

"Not everyone has a body temperature of two degrees," she says, slipping her arms into the satiny sleeves, the weight of so much tooled fabric settling luxuriously onto her shoulders. "Oh, that's much better. No wonder you wear this coat all the time."

"Lestrade bought it for me," he replies. Shock courses through her. He never talks about his past. "After I solved his ninth case. After I let him throw away the rest of my drugs."

She's silent. Then –

"Yes, I had a relapse after I met him," Sherlock says, almost impatiently. But not quite; he's holding himself slightly back. Probably doesn't want to relive the memories. "He said he wouldn't give me any more cases until I was clean. So I got clean. And then he gave me cases, and then he bought me the coat."

He smiles, the edges of his jagged mouth drawing up. "It was a really nice coat. I snuck money into his savings account to pay him back. He thought it was a bank error; always will, I suppose."

She opens her mouth. _That was really nice of you – _

"Don't say it," Sherlock says, raising his hand. "I know what you're going to say, Irene. It was really nice of me, you're glad I did it, you wonder if I ever did something like that for anyone else. Oh, right, I did do something like that for John. His cane, right. Fixed his psychomatic limp, didn't I. And –"

"You did," she says. "And it was."

"Nice of me," he muses, his eyes half-lidded as he looks at her. "Was it? Was it really? If I did something for someone, because I like them, is that nice? Or would it be nice if I did something for someone I didn't like? Isn't it selfish if I want to be nice, for me?"

She smiles, pain and correction wrapped in one expression. _Here's a surprise, Sherlock, here's something to think about_. "Why did you jump off?"

"What?" He jerks his head back, curls flying upwards. "What do you mean?"

"Why did you jump off the roof of the hospital, Sherlock?"

Oh, he's got it now. He turns away, turns back to her, caught. Trying to deceive her, and the struggle is working in the lines of his face.

"Because," and his lovely voice is stuttering, just like John's was a half hour ago, it's breaking, "because I _had_ to. You know that. I couldn't let any of you die, it was selfish of me. I couldn't let him win."

"That's a lie," Irene says, stiffening her back, leaning forward. "By the end it wasn't about Moriarty anymore. Lestrade said his time of death was before yours, never mind that yours was fake; you _care_ about us, Sherlock. You always have. You are nice, you do nice things, _good_ things, because you care. That's not selfishness, and love isn't losing, it's not about losing or winning at all. It's not a game. It's a choice."

"I am sick of choices," he says. Hoarse. Suddenly standing still, empty, drained.

Irene wants to reach out and touch his face, soothe the pain around his mouth, but her hands are cold and she thinks he wouldn't let her. She curls her fingers in the sleeves of his coat, hoping to warm them. Hoping. Her nails are pinpricks in her palms, but the pain is floating somewhere else.

"Not every choice is hard," she says, her throat as raw as his.

"I'm afraid of hurting you," he says. His pale eyes are steady. They close. White eyelids almost blue.

Then he exhales, as if the weight of that sentence has been more than he can bear.

The night echoes his sentence around them: truth.

"Oh," Irene says, soundlessly, "_oh_," and she finally, truly, understands. She understands.


	17. Dinner

**Dinner**

They're still on the balcony. The glass panes of the door fade behind her white breath.

Sherlock opens his grey eyes. Focussed away from her. "Do you? Understand?"

"Do I look stupid, Sherlock?" Irene snaps. She covers her mouth with a clenched hand, forcing her temper down, biting back pain-filled responses. The sleeve of his coat drags against her chin, heavy fabric, rough-seamed. She steps back.

He stiffens, but says nothing.

"What do you mean, you're afraid of hurting me?" she continues. Attempting to sound calm, inquiring. She's fairly certain it's not working; her voice is a little too cold. "In what way? And why do you think I don't – I wouldn't have a say in this?"

"I _left_ you," he says, to the door. "And then you nearly died because of me. Moran went after you because of me."

"But he's dead," Irene says, because it's all she can think to say. "He and Moriarty, they're both _dead_ –"

"They won't be a problem anymore, yes, of _course_," Sherlock says, stalking forward, cutting her off, his words so thin. Like needles in her lungs. "But there will always be other problems, Irene, always other final _problems_. You would have to be on guard for the rest of your life. I am not a safe man to stand by. Nor – a kind one."

"Then why can John?" she snarls at him, so angry that she can feel it in her numb fingertips, the heels of her feet, a terrible beating pulse. "Tell me that, Sherlock. Tell me why I'm too fragile for you, and for all the people who hate you. I survived Moran, I _survived!_ I _beat_ him!"

"You were going to die," Sherlock says, all ice now, his hands clasped behind his back. Looking down into her face like a vulture. A pronouncement. "If I hadn't found you, you would have died."

It's true.

_But I don't need him. I love him. He won't be my crutch. I'll stand on my own feet. As I always had. I would have died by Moran's hand, but I would have been my own person to the very end._

"Everyone dies," she says, lifting her chin, dropping her shoulders. Voice steady. "I will die. You can't stop that, even if you wanted to. I don't need you to save me, Sherlock. I never have."

"So you don't care, then?" His eyes are wide open.

She's thrown by the soft question. "What?"

"You don't care that your life will be in danger. You don't care about my selfishness, my lack of experience in – in _love_, or whatever you want to call it. My habits, my violin-playing, my shooting the walls, my cruelty. You don't care about those."

"I'm not afraid of danger. And you must know how used I am to your habits. And don't you think I'll just take it when you snap at me; I'll give as good as I get."

"But… why?"

"Why are you so worried about my well-being?" she says.

It's the same question as his.

His words falter; he opens his mouth partway, closes it tightly. Sets his hands on his hips. Deductions settling into place in that massive brain of his, all those gears and levers and pulleys whirring to a stop, all those palatial rooms opening their doors at once.

His eyes…

He says, "You are an extraordinary woman, Irene Adler."

A breath of astonishment lodges in her throat.

"You're not so bad yourself," she says.

He doesn't move. She can see another door opening behind his metallic-bright eyes.

"Well, go on, then," she says, and smiles. Tilts her head back.

When he finally leans down, one silken purple-wrinkling arm cautiously curving around her, she rises on her toes. Meets his warm lips with hers. Pours into him like an overflowing water pitcher. He sighs into her mouth. In her mind's eye, she sees her hair sprout flowers down her back, transparent red blooms falling along the incline of her throat.

Sherlock's coat slips free: long black grasses pouring around her legs.

She pulls away when his breathing quickens, her hands drawing up his face, lingering under his eyes, thumbs lined up alongside his nose. Cupping his luminous eyes. Pale smooth skin under her hands.

"How long?" she asks him, taking her hands away, one to her throat, the other to his shoulder. Her vision trembles and she leans a little into him, into the strength of his chest, the pounding of his heartbeat against her shoulder. Heat waves passing over her eyes, a fever in her head.

She tilts her head up to look at him; he's not moving.

Sherlock's eyes are pure blue; he looks stunned, disoriented, drugged. His hand still lingers on the back of her head, fingertips hot against her scalp. A lopsided smile slides across his face and away again in one heartbeat.

"How long – _oh_. I don't know." A purr of a word. He doesn't know.

_How long have you loved me?_

She laughs at him, this precise man, this man who catalogues every variety of tobacco ash. The coat slips further down her calves, pools around her feet. "You don't _know?_"

"I don't," he says, wonder in his voice. "No. I don't know. A long time. A… long time."

The clock tolls in the hotel room. A marker, low and deep.

"Good," Irene says, and she leans down to retrieve his coat. She offers it with both hands.

Sherlock takes it, his fingers grazing her wrists, pulls it back on, shrugging it over his shoulders. His coat collar raised, brushing his chin, but he does not button his coat up the middle. A line dances between his eyebrows: still marvelling at this, at his feelings. His eyes dart to her in thought, away, back to her again.

"Irene," he says.

"Sherlock."

Then he smiles, a lingering grin too big for his face, and he turns and opens the door for her. She takes his hand, _free to touch him, free to look at him, free,_ and pulls him after her, into the warmth of the hotel room. There's a wonderful smell of hot meat and wine; a trolley is waiting patiently at the foot of the second bed, filled with plates and tureens.

Sherlock slips his hand away, goes to shut the balcony door, then passes the trolley to shut and lock the other door. Black coat swirling around him, his feet light in his strides, easy motion. The door hisses closed.

Irene sits down on the edge of the bed, slips off her shoes. Thick soft carpet under her bare feet. She smiles.

"Dinner?" Sherlock asks, returning.

He strips off his coat and places it beside her, moves to the trolley. Undoing the buttons of his cuffs, rolling up his purple sleeves. He lifts two plates from the stack of three, heaps them with bread; ladles steaming soup into two bowls.

A question of more than food.

"Yes, I'd love some dinner," Irene says. "Yes."

And they do.

Have dinner, that is.

They really do.

* * *

"Your phone is ringing." [_bring biring birinnng_]

"It's probably Lestrade." [rustling noises]

"Should I answer it?"

"No." [a drawn-out sigh, a prominent clicking noise]

"Sherlock –" [more rustling, clatter of phone against wood]

"It can wait."

"Alright."

[moderate silence, broken by breathing]

"Shouldn't we finish dinner?" [rustling, footsteps, clink of silverware]

"In a while." [more footsteps] "Where are you going? Oh."

"The food is getting cold." [chairs moving]

"So what?"

"I'm hungry. I hate to say it, but I really am, Sherlock. And this soup is stone cold." [silverware clinking]

"Well, then, dessert?" [clink of plates]

"You're on a case."

"We just solved it."

[muffled laughter] "I am aware of that, Sherlock. I was joking."

"Are you feeling alright, or is this just how you behave during bouts of strong emotion?"

"Shut up."

"Very well. Have some cake."

* * *

"What if John comes back?" [clink of fork against plate]

"Why would he? And I've locked the doors." [clink of silverware against teeth]

"I know, but he has a key card." [clink of fork]

"No, he doesn't."

"Yes, he does. I saw it. He's been using it all week."

"I pickpocketed him when he passed me in the hall." [rustling in pocket]

"Sherlock!" [muffled laughter] "But you took his car keys, too. And his wallet. _Sherlock_."

"It was all or nothing; he'd stuffed everything in one pocket." [rustling] "And I'm out of cash."

"You're incorrigible." [clink of silverware]

"Something you are well aware of, and yet –" [fork clattering against plate]

[silverware falling onto plate] [rustling, startled gasp from previous speaker] "And yet, yes, I love you."

"I…" [clearing throat] "I… you know."

"Yes, I do."

"Dessert can wait."

"Yes, it can."

* * *

"Irene? You're dreaming."

[rustling noises]

"What time is it?"

"Two-thirty. Go back to sleep."

"You're staying?"

"Of course."

"Good."

"Goodnight, Irene."

"Goodnight."

* * *

"You're still here."

"Yes, I never left."

"No, you didn't."

"I won't."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yes."

* * *

_The End_


End file.
